A study on the effect of green elements arrangement and high albedo pavement on the outdoor microclimate and thermal comfort

Microclimate and thermal comfort design are increasingly valued by urban designers in the context of urban warming because they can provide fundamental decisions on the development of comfort-enhancing solutions aligned with the project vision in the early stages of the project. This study is dedicated to exploring the impact of different arrangements of green elements and the combination with different pavement materials on the improvement of microclimate and thermal comfort. Study found that keeping a planting spacing of 5 meters between each tree to ensure the canopy does not overlap with each other could bring relatively consistent wind speed and provide more extent of cooling areas to alleviate outdoor heat stress at the hottest time point. Although the high albedo pavement materials did not prevent the emergence of outdoor heat stress, they somewhat weakened this phenomenon. In some cases, it could reduce the heat stress levels to a moderate range

Urban Regenerative Design: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Relationship Between Urban Greenspace and Child obesity

Urban regenerative design is a significant evolution in the concept of sustainability, which goes one step further beyond the balance point between humans and nature. As a comprehensive approach, improving public health and wellbeing is one of the main focuses of urban regenerative design. This research aims to explore whether there is a relationship between urban greenspace and child obesity using different ages and periods. The neighborhood socioeconomic status, the distance to the nearest fast food outlets as the variables that participate in this analysis. Results reveal that the variable of neighborhood socioeconomic status, fast food outlets and urban greenspace all showed a positive and statistically significant relationship with obesity in children aged 4 to 5 and 10 to 11 in time period of 2008-2011 and 2013-2016. Each model explained (R-square) more than 90% variability of obesity. Study found that children living close to the greenspace are less likely to be obese. Religious greenspace and playfields appear to have the most effect on child obesity, but this finding needs further investigation. Neighborhood socioeconomic status has a powerful influence on child obesity. Although causality needs to be confirmed, these results suggest that policymakers and urban planners may need to seriously consider the potential positive impact of the green space on child obesity when formulating policies

Renewal strategies of high-density neighborhood for encouraging children’s active living

As transformation of life-stylein the cities increased risks for outdoor inactivity, overweight, and obesity among children, it is crucial to understand the correlates of outdoor activitiesand their daily built environment. This study focused on high density neighborhood and used investigation-oriented method to exploredfactors affecting children\u27s outdoor activities and way of integrating outdoor activities into children’s daily routine by providing multiple renewal strategies including building walking and cycling network, establishing linkage between indoor and outdoor space, creating community core and facilitating challenging activities. Authors hope to promote healthy and active lifestyle for children by providing a safe, comfortable and playful neighborhood

Urban Regenerative Design: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Relationship Between Urban Greenspace and Child obesity

Urban regenerative design is a significant evolution in the concept of sustainability, which goes one step further beyond the balance point between humans and nature. As a comprehensive approach, improving public health and wellbeing is one of the main focuses of urban regenerative design. This research aims to explore whether there is a relationship between urban greenspace and child obesity using different ages and periods. The neighborhood socioeconomic status, the distance to the nearest fast food outlets as the variables that participate in this analysis. Results reveal that the variable of neighborhood socioeconomic status, fast food outlets and urban greenspace all showed a positive and statistically significant relationship with obesity in children aged 4 to 5 and 10 to 11 in time period of 2008-2011 and 2013-2016. Each model explained (R-square) more than 90% variability of obesity. Study found that children living close to the greenspace are less likely to be obese. Religious greenspace and playfields appear to have the most effect on child obesity, but this finding needs further investigation. Neighborhood socioeconomic status has a powerful influence on child obesity. Although causality needs to be confirmed, these results suggest that policymakers and urban planners may need to seriously consider the potential positive impact of the green space on child obesity when formulating policies

(Re)Defining Restorative and Regenerative Urban Design and Their Relation to UNSDGs—A Systematic Review

The 1992, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development highlighted that human impacts on the environment should be reduced. Against this backdrop, publications on restorative and regenerative urban design first appeared in the mid-1990s, and both disciplines have developed rapidly up to the present time. However, there is still some uncertainty regarding the interrelationships and differences between these two terms, and their association with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Based on a search of the Web of Science database, a total of 117 papers were studied with the help of VOS viewer and R studio. The differences between the two disciplines and their respective associations with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals were analyzed using key performance indicators. Detailed analysis was used to explore their current development status. Scientific publication and citation network analyses were used to examine the historical developments and interrelationships between two disciplines. The review revealed that both disciplines are closely related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, especially regenerative urban design, but they have developed independently in the field of urban design. Unlike the descriptions found in many of the identified papers, restorative urban design not only focuses on ecological aspects but also attempts to create a built environment that allows its users to thrive both physically and mentally. Regenerative urban design is more inclined to restore or create an “ability”. Further, both disciplines are in their infancy but have evolved from internal conceptual development to the stage of exploring external relationships and frameworks as well as mechanisms. This review found that although many frameworks and models are used to support and evaluate these two disciplines, almost all of them fail to integrate necessary aspects of the ecosystem, e.g., elements, relationships, processes, etc. Moreover, future work should examine the design patterns that are closely related to restorative and regenerative urban design to better guide the concrete practice

Changes in Urban Planning in Response to Pandemics: A Comparative Review from H1N1 to COVID-19 (2009–2022)

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought enormous casualties and huge losses to cities around the world, causing urban planning to reflect on its serious inadequacy in public health crisis management. Looking back at the pandemics of modern history, urban planning has been dedicated to enhancing disease prevention capacity as well as improving the wellness of human beings. By systematically comparing the urban planning response between COVID-19 (2019) and its predecessor H1N1 (2009) in the literature, this paper seeks to explore how urban planning theories evolved through the pandemics and whether COVID-19 has led to possible new implications and directions for urban planning in the future. A total of 3129 related results with overlapping themes of “city”, “pandemic”, and “planning” in the database were narrowed down to 30 articles published between 2009 and 2019 on the topic of H1N1 and 99 articles published between 2020 and 2022 on the topic of COVID-19 after careful extraction and integration. Through bibliographic and detailed analysis, twelve urban theories used to fight against pandemics were identified. In addition, three main changes between urban planning responses to the H1N1 and COVID-19 pandemics were summarized: from focusing on stages of “in-pandemic” and “pre-pandemic” to focusing on stages of “post-pandemic”, from global and national to local, and from the absence of an urban-built environment to a return to ‘healthiness’ in urban planning and design. Such comparisons are useful for examining the current situation and providing suggestions for a possible upcoming outbreak

Architectural and urban design tools for reducing energy consumption in cities

Cities are responsible for about 30% of the energy consumed worldwide. Since 2007 more than 50% of the world population lives in cities, and urbanization is still growing. The energy-efficiency of cities is gaining greater importance today. The paper examines the possibilities of energy consumption reduction and optimization in cities. Various urban and architectural tools are described below that affect indirectly and directly the energy balance of cities. The possible ways of using renewable energy sources in cities have been analyzed. Ways and means of their use is analyzed in on-site, nearby and off-site systems

Investigation on window opening and closing behavior in schools through measurements and surveys: A case study in Budapest

In this study, a multidisciplinary approach has been adopted to observe and investigate window opening and closing behavior in two classrooms of a Hungarian school. Surveys and measurements have been used to identify environmental, contextual or habitual drivers of window use. For this purpose, 8-months long time-series datasets and qualitative teacher interviews were the tools used to investigate behavior. The two classrooms have identical boundary conditions; however, drivers for window adjustments were observed to be different. In one case, window use is primarily triggered by habits and time-dependent actions, whereas, in the second one, environmental parameters are the key drivers. In the latter case, stochastic behavioral models have been developed aiming at a future implementation in energy simulations. In the literature, few studies focused on analyzing these phenomena, resorting to interdisciplinary methods to reach a comprehensive understanding of occupants' behavior. Moreover, assessing behavior can lead to an optimization of the indoor environment, which is of primary importance in school buildings both in terms of energy use and pupils' health

Occupants in building design decision-making

Building occupants affect building performance in many ways, depending on how the building design responds to what occupants need, the amount of control that building designers have afforded them, and how well the design team has anticipated the way they will want to interact with the building and its systems in the future. This chapter discusses the challenge of integrating considerations related to building occupancy and occupant behavior into the decision-making process of building designers. It outlines the role of information management in coordinating information needed by designers at different design stages and contexts, and the range of occupancy-related factors to be considered in design practice, to facilitate performance and risk assessment in relation to legislation, regulations, and the interests of the client. This practice-based context forms the background for a discussion on how information and decisions about occupants could flow throughout the design process in a coherent and coordinated way. It concludes by proposing a knowledge management template for recording and supporting information transfer regarding occupancy throughout the design decision-making process, which can fit within and support current industry tools such as building information modeling and building performance simulation

A library of building occupant behaviour models represented in a standardised schema

Over the past four decades, a substantial body of literature has explored the impacts of occupant behaviour (OB) on building technologies, operation, and energy consumption. A large number of data-driven behavioural models have been developed based on field data. These models lack standardisation and consistency, leading to difficulties in applications and comparison. To address this problem, an ontology was developed using the drivers-needs-actions-systems (DNAS) framework. Recent work has been carried out to implement the theoretical DNAS framework into an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) schema, titled ‘occupant behaviour XML’ (obXML) which is a practical implementation of OB models that can be integrated into building performance simulation (BPS) programs. This paper presents a newly developed library of OB models represented in the standardised obXML schema format. This library provides ready-to-use examples for BPS users to employ more accurate occupant representation in their energy models. The library, which contains an initial effort of 52 OB models, was made publicly available for the BPS community. As part of the library development process, limitations of the obXML schema were identified and addressed, and future improvements were proposed. Authors hope that by compiling this library building, energy modellers from all over the world can enhance their BPS models by integrating more accurate and robust OB patterns