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Abstract:All the elements present in open areas contribute to define the microclimate and they have to be designed to mitigate the microclimate. In particular urban materials have to be selected on the basis of the urban space use and its thermal behavior. This paper shows the influence of urban pavements and building facades materials on the open spaces environmental performance and on thermal comfort conditions. In order to evaluate the contribution of the materials thermal simulations in dynamic regime were carried out of simplified configurations (corner of squares and streets. The paper shows how the urban space thermal performances change when only one or two walls are considered and if differences occur when the analyzed area is near or far from the wall, as well as when building height changes. This first part of analysis considers the open space as reference case and evaluates how the thermal performances change according to the changing context (from open space to the corner of the square). The second part points out the differences among the materials due to the physical properties, like albedo, thermal capacity and density. The last analysis concerns the evaluation of these configurations in terms of thermal comfort.

Densely urbanized areas are greatly exposed to the risks from climate change as reported by IPCC in 2018. In particular, compact urban settings afflicted by heavy storms and droughts, coupled with the intensification of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and incremental heat waves require a requalification of the outdoor environment that accommodates for both strategic water management and enhanced microclimatic conditions. The present study proposes simplified procedures to enable the application of complex hydrodynamic modelling software (SWMM), by non-expert users (such as planners and designers), in the preliminary phases of an urban space project according to a water-sensitive urban design approach. In the paper, Italian multi-level regulations aimed at controlling the impacts of excessive rainfall in urban areas are taken into account as well as the integration of circular water management systems with evaporative cooling strategies. The proposed procedure is focused on two aspects: 1- to simplify the steps needed to convert the existing climatic data to provide a numerical sequence, to insert into the software; 2- to define a set of pre-compiled and multi-purposed solutions toolkits for the design of urban spaces that can be imported into the software through an external database.

The chapter addresses the urban regeneration of an area starting from multi-step interventions in a small square. These interventions consider a multifaceted point of view which respects local ecological processes while ensuring that transit and other economic and social functions take place. This approach encompasses solutions that respond to city scale needs in terms of stormwater management and the local conditions of thermal comfort and livability at the neighborhood scale. The benefits of urban liveability are now well recognized internationally, and among them increased city attractiveness to avoid abandonment is at the table of several local governments. Municipalities worldwide have pushed for the development of new pedestrian spaces or the regeneration of existing ones to foster liveability through a strategy known as Tactical Urbanism. The paper focuses on the first square in the south part of Milan-Italy to receive such intervention. Beyond Tactical Urbanism, but starting from it, this proposal is a preliminary assessment that aims to evaluate permanent and structural interventions in a square that can also contribute to the environmental resilience of the city. Two different software were used to estimate the environmental benefits of the proposal. The software SWMM (US-EPA) was used to evaluate strategies that guarantee the hydraulic invariance of the intervention area. Second, RayMan Pro was used to assess the contribution of the proposed solution to the microclimate by comparing scenarios in terms of the UTCI index, taking as input local climatic data and data present in the literature.

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