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Urban Planning for Climate Adaptation: Assessing the Performance of the...
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Urban Planning for Climate Adaptation: Assessing the Performance of the Built Environment at a Human Scale

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sustainability and Applications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 14002

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Isaac Guedi Capeluto

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel
Interests: Sustainable green architecture; Lighting and daylighting in architecture; Energy retrofitting of existing buildings; Performance-based design; Intelligent buildings; Building envelope; Zero energy buildings and communities; Solar and daylight rights in urban design; Design tools
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Dalit Shach-Pinsly

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel
Interests: built environment evaluation and measurement; urban security analysis; analysis of qualitative aspects of the built environment in quantitative terms; urban regeneration

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change has increased the global frequency of extreme weather events that have a significant impact on life in cities, compelling a conceptual adjustment in the way buildings and cities can adapt to these changes. Adapting by design is essential for ensuring our cities and communities remain comfortable and attractive places to live. Moreover, the performance of the built environment is an important concern affecting quality of life and plays a critical role in every urban milieu. Thus, it is crucial to include performative requirements when preparing plans to ensure that the built environment adapts to expected changes, while achieving comfort conditions in new and existing buildings and open spaces between them.

There is an increasing need for assessing building and public open space performance in a human scale. Performance has many aspects and implications: The quality and performance of a building stems from the building itself; however, the surrounding built environment also has a mutual influence on building performance and on the urban environment as a whole. Currently, several models and tools already exist and new ones are being developed with which to separately measure diverse qualities in the built environment, whose results can be visualized in mapping and design plans as well as calculated with numbers and codes.

Urban planning is the main influencer in the development of the built environment; therefore, urban planning for climate adaptation can increase the performance values of the built environment. The public’s successful use and enjoyment of the open space depends heavily on microclimatic conditions that affect thermal comfort. Thus, this Special Issue will focus on but is not limited to climate change and urban planning to increase urban resilience, enhancing the performance of buildings and open spaces, improving environmental quality and comfort, planning regulations and performance, and design tools for sustainable design.

Prof. Dr. Isaac Capeluto
Dr. Dalit Shach-Pinsly
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Urban planning and climate change
  • Adaptation by design
  • Climate change adaptation and urban policies
  • Built environment performance
  • Comfort and wellbeing
  • Retrofitting
  • Energy poverty and dis(comfort)

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

23 pages, 7999 KiB  
Article
Lessons Learned from Applying Adaptation Pathways in Heatwave Risk Management in Antwerp and Key Challenges for Further Development
by Maddalen Mendizabal, Nieves Peña, Hans Hooyberghs, Griet Lambrechts, Joel Sepúlveda and Saioa Zorita
Sustainability 2021, 13(20), 11481; https://doi.org/10.3390/su132011481 - 18 Oct 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2814
Abstract
Heat exposure is a well-known health hazard, which causes several problems ranging from thermal discomfort or productivity reduction to the aggravation of existing illnesses and death. Climate projections foresee an increase in the frequency and intensity of heat-related impacts on human health. To [...] Read more.
Heat exposure is a well-known health hazard, which causes several problems ranging from thermal discomfort or productivity reduction to the aggravation of existing illnesses and death. Climate projections foresee an increase in the frequency and intensity of heat-related impacts on human health. To reduce these climate risks, governments need a better understanding of not only the scale and the factors affecting those risks, but also how to prepare and protect the city and citizens against these risks and prevent them through effective policy making. Therefore, climate adaptation decisions need to be made in complex systems with manifold uncertainties. In response to these deep uncertainties, different planning approaches have been developed to assist policymakers in decision making. This paper is focused on one of the dynamic adaptive policy planning approaches: the adaptation pathway. This approach allows designing alternative feasible plans that are flexible and can respond when new information appears or when conditions in the environment change. This paper presents a structured methodology for designing adaptation pathways. The work describes a high-level adaptation pathway covering heatwave impacts on productivity and health at city level in Antwerp to ensure the city adapts to future conditions. Lastly, a summary is provided of the lessons learned and the challenges of this approach are discussed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Planning for Climate Adaptation: Assessing the Performance of the Built Environment at a Human Scale)
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14 pages, 553 KiB  
Article
Effectiveness of Chinese Regulatory Planning in Mitigating and Adapting to Climate Change: Comparative Analysis Based on Q Methodology
by Chengzhi Yin, Jianhua Xiao and Tianqi Zhang
Sustainability 2021, 13(17), 9701; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13179701 - 30 Aug 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2505
Abstract
With cities considered the main source of carbon emissions, urban planning could mitigate and help adapt to climate change, given the allocation and regulation of public policies of urban spatial resources. China’s regulatory planning remains the basis for building permission in the original [...] Read more.
With cities considered the main source of carbon emissions, urban planning could mitigate and help adapt to climate change, given the allocation and regulation of public policies of urban spatial resources. China’s regulatory planning remains the basis for building permission in the original urban and rural planning, and the new territorial spatial planning systems, determining the quality of urban plan implementation. Comprehensive regulatory plans effectively reduce carbon emissions. This study employs Q methodology to compare and analyze urban planners’ and practitioners’ perceptions of China’s regulatory planning in climate change mitigation and adaptation. The findings show that while regulatory planning is key, potential deficiencies include the gaps between regulatory from master plans, capacity shortages of designations and indicators, and unequal rights and responsibilities of local governments. However, mandatory indicators in regulatory planning, especially “greening rate,” “building density,” “land use type,” and “application of renewable energy technologies to the development of municipal infrastructure” could effectively mitigate climate change. “Greening rate” is the core indicator in regulatory planning since it provides empirical evidence for the “green space effect”. This study indicates that local customization of combined regulation of greening rate and green spaces could help mitigate and help China adapt to climate change. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Planning for Climate Adaptation: Assessing the Performance of the Built Environment at a Human Scale)
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20 pages, 5322 KiB  
Article
From Form-Based to Performance-Based Codes
by Dalit Shach-Pinsly and Isaac Guedi Capeluto
Sustainability 2020, 12(14), 5657; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12145657 - 14 Jul 2020
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 7573
Abstract
The performance of the built environment is an important concern affecting the quality of life and plays a critical role in every urban milieu. However, it generally disappears in the drawing plans. Current planning regulations do not always include performance requirements as part [...] Read more.
The performance of the built environment is an important concern affecting the quality of life and plays a critical role in every urban milieu. However, it generally disappears in the drawing plans. Current planning regulations do not always include performance requirements as part of the planning demands. Additionally, decision-makers lack the methodology and tools to demonstrate the expected performance of the built environment. Therefore, an examination of the performance of the designed area is sometimes neglected in the planning process. Current urban plans focus mainly on technical issues, counting the number of residential units, density measures, etc. The trend of progressive planning regulations, such as Form-Based Code (FBC), aims to coordinate these separated quantitative parameters into one comprehensive 3D plan where the urban form plays as a main integrator. However, these plans still lack the demand for understanding the quality and performance of the built environment through the visualization. This article addresses this gap, the lack of understanding of the performance of the built environment in urban plans and proposes the concept of Performance-Based Codes (PBC). The transition from form-based code to performance-based-design will be demonstrated through the presentation of two performance-based models, the Solar Envelope and Security Rating Index, and the possibility of integrating them into the planning process. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Planning for Climate Adaptation: Assessing the Performance of the Built Environment at a Human Scale)
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