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Recent health issues have raised awareness among the general public and stimulated debate over the future forms of urban living. Those factors which enhance healthier environments are receiving broader recognition in maintaining the health of citizens in a time of pandemic. The current article explores the framework of ecosystem services to examine the temporary interventions introduced in response to the current challenges. These short-term adjustments may indicate possible pathways for the future. Analyses of the impacts of forms of urban settings and particularly of green infrastructure as a primary element which improves citizens' health are used to support the reflections.

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The mapping of different aspects of urban phenomena and their relation to the physical cityscape has been greatly extended by the use of geomatics. The tradition to base reasoning on ‘understanding the world’ dates from the time of Aristotle. The extension plan for Barcelona (Eixample), developed by Cerdà, which opened the era of modern urban planning, was preceded by analyses of rich data, describing both detailed demographic issues and physical structures. The contemporary, postmodernist city planning continues this tradition, although a shift towards analyses of more human-related issues can be observed, covering, inter alia, citizens’ perception, cultural differences and patterns of human activities with regard to distinct social groups. The change towards a more human-related perspective and the inclusion of urban morphology analyses are direct consequences of this trend. The required data may be gathered within a crowd-sourcing participation process. According to communicative planning theory, communication with the wider public is indispensable in order to achieve the best results, and can be realized with the use of sophisticated IT tools. Evidence-based reasoning may be supported by images of significant aesthetic values, which inspire immediate reactions

<p>The threats that arise from climate change and their associated economic, social, and environmental impacts are leading to the transformation of the spatial structures of cities. The growing demand for climate adaptability calls for the development of normative criteria for the design of forms of urban settings that integrate vegetation. Climate-responsive urban design reacts to the challenges of urban physics, which depend heavily on the forms of urban structures and the role of greenery. This method includes research on vegetation indexes and their impact on urban regulatory functions. The goal is to propose a comprehensive framework for assessing the functioning of urban public space, which considers the role and maintenance of green infrastructure. The intersection with the subject matter of analytical urban morphology is evident, in terms of the resolution of the urban fabric and its transformations over time. The framework of climate-responsive urban design also covers examining the parameters of surrounding built structures, such as the floor area ratio, the building coverage ratio, and building heights. In particular, the requirements of climate adaptation have an impact on the design of outdoor spaces in cities. In this article, we apply the selected methods that contribute to the climate-responsive urban design model to recommend the transformations of two urban nodes, in Lodz and Warsaw (Poland). Our goal is to indicate the future form of nodal public spaces with a focus on the needs of urban greenery, and to determine indicators for the local climate zone. After an initial literature review, we discuss a number of available indicators from the perspective of how they might contribute to determine the environmental conditions. We focus on urban water cycle, the requirement of trees for water, and insolation conditions.</p>