Microclimate Improvement of Inner-City Urban Areas in a Mediterranean Coastal City

Maria Makropoulou
Additional contact information
Maria Makropoulou: Lab of Urban Morphology, Department of Planning and Regional Development, University of Thessaly, 38334 Volos, Greece

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 6, 1-29

Abstract: This paper investigates urban bioclimatic interventions in the central area of a coastal medium-sized city in Greece. Two urban blocks typical of the urban fabric of the city center and a neighborhood of 38 urban blocks were selected. Different proposed Bioclimatic Renewal Scenarios were investigated through microclimatic simulations using the micro-scale numerical model, ENVI-met. The simulations aimed at assessing various scenarios and examining the effect of the different bioclimatic interventions on the local outdoor environment, such as the application of cool materials, greenery of public open space, and other. Thus a parametric analysis was carried out. A final bioclimatic renewal scenario, based primarily on the parameters, proved to have a positive effect on the local microclimate, was proposed and assessed. The simulation results showed that the final scenario resulted in the most effective heat mitigation strategy for the case studies’ microclimate. The vegetation-based scenario also contributed to a significant microclimate improvement in the case studies. The benefits of the various bioclimatic interventions were magnified when these were applied on a spatial scale larger than that of the single urban block, hence on the urban neighborhood scale.

Keywords: urban blocks; bioclimatic interventions; simulations; microclimate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/6/882/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/6/882/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:6:p:882-:d:99606

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().