Simon Marvin, Yang Junyan, Zheng Yi, Jonathan Rutherford

Keywords： Walkability; Urban Microclimate; High-density Built Environment; Urban Planning; Control Strategy

Abstract：

Walkable urban environment not only contains continuous, beautiful and pleasant walking space, but also has a profound impact on people’s walking experience in the city due to the appropriate temperature and wind speed. In recent years, under the influence of global climate change, unsuited urban microclimate including too hot or too cold weather or strong wind has seriously affected outdoor activities in European cities with high density, such as London, Paris, Brussels, Barcelona, which forced people to reduce or avoid activities including walking in related urban spaces with harsh microclimate environment. Simultaneously, a large number of existing studies in walkable research field are focusing on the analysis of the physical elements in the urban pedestrian environment, such as landscape, pedestrian path width, recreation facilities, and their internal mechanisms. However, there are few studies on the urban microclimate elements, such as temperature and wind speed, which affect people’s physiological feelings in outdoor activities. Therefore, it is worthwhile to explore whether there is a microclimate governance logic in the specific discussion and measurement of people’s walking experience and the improvement of walking suitability in cities. Based on this issue, this paper analyses the interaction between urban material space and urban microclimate, and summarizes the correlation mechanism between urban material environment and microclimate. Then, pedestrian-scaled and pedestrian-oriented urban microclimate control strategy and governance logic are proposed to improve pedestrians’ physiological feelings during the walking process in high-density urban built environment. In addition, this is to optimize walking suitability in high-density cities and to promote the development of human-oriented city from another view.

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