Urban greening to cool towns and cities: A systematic review of the empirical evidence

Bowler, Diana E.; Buyung-Ali, Lisette M; Knight, Thomas Andrew; Pullin, Andrew S.

doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2010.05.006

Cited by 2,110 publications

(1,181 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Yokobori and Ohta (2009), Lee et al (2009) and Bowler et al (2010) also showed that the influence of vegetation on air temperature was bigger during the night. None of them refer to cooling by evapotranspiration.…”

Section: Phase 1 -Site-dependent Coolingmentioning

confidence: 91%

Evening evapotranspirative cooling in relation to vegetation and urban geometry in the city of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Holmer

Thorsson

Lindén

2012

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Intra-urban cooling in the city of Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso in the Sahel zone of West Africa, was studied during the dry seasons in 2003, 2004 and 2007. The aim was to see how vegetation, built structure and position within the built-up area influenced the nocturnal cooling. Cooling was divided into two phases. In Phase 1 (16 : 00-20 : 00 hours LST = CET), cooling was very different between the sites while in Phase 2 (20 : 00-06 : 00 hours LST), cooling rates differed insignificantly and the whole area cooled almost at the same rate. Thus the temperature differences between the sites developed during these few hours in Phase 1 were preserved during the rest of the night. In Phase 1, Evening Evapotranspirative Cooling was intensive at vegetated sites that cooled almost twice as fast as sparsely vegetated. This was indicated by a humidity rate (increase of specific humidity per hour) that was high at a vegetated site, but considerably lower at a sparsely vegetated. In Phase 2 the humidity rate was slightly negative with little difference between the sites. After a division in vegetated and sparsely vegetated sites built structure (sky view factor) were shown to influence cooling, but no influence of the position within the built-up area was traced. Thus, the site-specific properties dominated cooling, giving large intra-urban temperature differences. The study also showed the importance of considering a large enough source area to account for micro-scale advection.

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Section: Phase 1 -Site-dependent Coolingmentioning

confidence: 91%

Evening evapotranspirative cooling in relation to vegetation and urban geometry in the city of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Holmer

Thorsson

Lindén

2012

Intl Journal of Climatology

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“…There is an established and diverse body of evidence detailing these complex linkages and their underlying mechanisms (Hartig et al, 2014;Keniger et al, 2013;Bowler et al, 2010).…”

Section: Van Hammentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature-based solutions to address global societal challenges

Cohen-Shacham¹,

Janzen²,

Maginnis³

et al. 2016

920

150

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“…Research showed that the cooling effect of vegetation on surface temperature is larger than on air temperature [83][84][85][86][87][88][89]. Compared with paved asphalt roads and squares, grass and vegetative ground cover play an important role in improving thermal comfort by maintaining low surface temperature [90].…”

Section: Urban Vegetation Descriptorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Urban Design Descriptors on Outdoor Thermal Environment: A Literature Review

et al. 2017

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This paper presents a literature review on urban design indicators addressing the impact of urban geometry and vegetation on the outdoor thermal environment at the pedestrian level, as urban geometry and vegetation have been regarded as the most influential urban design factors that affect outdoor microclimate. The thermal balance concept is first introduced to elaborate how each component of energy fluxes is affected by the urban built environment, which helps to explore the underlying thermophysical mechanisms of how urban design modifies the outdoor thermal environment. The literature on numerous urban design descriptors addressing urban geometric characteristics is categorized into five groups in this paper according to the design features that the parameters entail, including land use intensity, building form, canyon geometry, space enclosure and descriptive characteristics. The literature on urban vegetation descriptors is reviewed together, followed by the combined effect of urban geometry and vegetation. This paper identifies a series of important urban design parameters and shows that the impact of design parameters on thermal environment varies with time, season, local climate and urban contexts. Contradictory impacts often occur between daytime and nighttime, or different seasons, which requests trade-offs to be achieved when proposing design strategies.

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Urban greening to cool towns and cities: A systematic review of the empirical evidence

Cited by 2,110 publications

References 59 publications

Evening evapotranspirative cooling in relation to vegetation and urban geometry in the city of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Evening evapotranspirative cooling in relation to vegetation and urban geometry in the city of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Nature-based solutions to address global societal challenges

The Impact of Urban Design Descriptors on Outdoor Thermal Environment: A Literature Review

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