Journal: City and Environment Interactions

Abbreviation

Publisher

Elsevier

Journal Volumes

ISSN

2590-2520

Description

Filters

2022 - 20254
Reset filters

Search Results

Publications 1 - 4 of 4
  • Mapping heat-related risks in Swiss cities under different urban tree scenarios
    Item type: Journal Article
    Koopmans, Myke; Schwaab, Jonas; Vicedo-Cabrera, Ana Maria; et al. (2024)
    City and Environment Interactions
    About three quarter of Swiss residents live in urban areas, and this proportion is expected to grow in future decades. An increasing number of people will therefore be exposed to urban heat, which can have adverse effects on human wellbeing, productivity and physical health. We explore the possibility to detect high-risk areas in five Swiss cities with the development of an urban heat-based risk-mapping approach. The included cities are Basel, Bern, Geneva, Lausanne and Zurich. The analysis is based on a combination of biophysical, including Landsat 8 derived Land Surface Temperature (LST), and socioeconomic data. Additionally, we assess the impact of urban trees on urban heat within the districts of these cities, helping to estimate how risk levels would change under two scenarios: one with increased tree cover (MaxTree) and another with no (NoTree) urban trees. The assessment on the impact of urban trees on heat showed that the areas with urban trees generally experience cooler temperatures compared to those without, both at the city and district levels. This underscores the positive role of urban trees in mitigating the urban heat effect. The risk mapping approach revealed a distinct spatial pattern for each city and high risk areas were identified. Generally, the high-risk areas in the analyzed cities cover the city centers and areas with high vulnerability. The ‘NoTree’ scenario showed higher risks compared to the baseline situation, illustrating that urban trees currently mitigate heat related risks in Swiss cities. The ‘MaxTree’ scenario results in lower risks, especially in the cities of Lausanne and Bern. The presented risk mapping approach, including the two idealized scenarios, can be used by policy- and decision-makers (e.g. city planners) can be a tool to determine where urban planning actions are the most urgent and where trees could be most beneficial in terms of adaptation to heat. The approach is easily adaptable and transferable to other cities, since it relies on a clear and simple methodological framework, openly available LST data, and basic socioeconomic variables at district scale that are available for many cities.
  • Trends and opportunities in adaptive planning for the built environment: A literature review
    Item type: Journal Article
    Yap, Jin Rui; Roman, Orlando; Adey, Bryan T.; et al. (2025)
    City and Environment Interactions
    Adaptive planning supports long-term decision-making under uncertainties, such as those arising from the dynamics of complex systems such as the built environment. This article presents a bibliometric and literature analysis of the adaptive planning paradigm in the context of planning for the built environment. Using the CiteSpace software, a document co-citation analysis of adaptive planning literature was conducted that outlines its temporal and structural evolution. This analysis revealed three distinct disciplines: 1) the Pathways Approaches, arising from climate adaptation, 2) Real Options, arising from financial analysis, and 3) Adaptive Management, arising from the environmental sciences. Subsequently, the literature analysis identified interdisciplinary core elements and recommended best practices for adaptive planning, in addition to frequently discussed challenges and state-of-the-art progress in addressing those challenges. Four emerging challenges that require further exploration were identified, which are: multi-scale considerations, institutional rigidity and uncertainty avoidance, organisational capacity development, and the science-policy gap. By highlighting the parallels across multiple disciplines, this work unifies the different bodies of literature through a synthesis of theoretical insights, clarification of core principles, and identification of barriers and future research directions for adaptive planning in the built environment.
  • A network optimisation approach to identify trade-offs between socio-economic and ecological objectives for regional integrated planning
    Item type: Journal Article
    Khiali Miab, Amin; Grêt-Regamey, Adrienne; Axhausen, Kay W.; et al. (2022)
    City and Environment Interactions
    Integrated regional planning aims to achieve sustainable development by considering multiple socio-economic, environmental, and ecological goals. However, determining the synergies and trade-offs between sustainability goals is a challenging task that requires an in depth analysis of the system-level effects of the implementation of planning policies. For example, polycentricity (i.e. multiple urban centres) is a common regional urban planning goal, which has shown to be beneficial for a region’s socio-economic conditions, but may also change the configuration of the settlement network (i.e. settlements connected by roads and traffic). Given the dependency of animal species on well-connected habitat networks, another possible planning goal is to maximise habitat availability (i.e. the total amount of habitat that is accessible for an individual animal). However, changes to a region’s settlement network can have a variety of impacts on the region’s habitat networks. Due to these interactions, it is unclear whether maximising polycentricity and habitat availability are compatible planning goals. To address this question, we developed a mathematical model of interacting settlement and habitat networks in a region of Switzerland. The settlement network model allowed us to predict commuter and traffic flows in our study region under a certain distribution of jobs and people across the municipalities. The level of polycentricity in our region was measured by calculating the hierarchy in the commuter flow network. The traffic flow network was linked to the habitat network, which was used to calculate the mean habitat availability. With multi-objective optimisations, both polycentricity and habitat availability were maximised by changing the distributions of jobs and people. Although both goals could be improved compared to the current situation, there was a trade-off between polycentricity and habitat availability along the Pareto front. Developing the region towards either of the planning goals could be achieved by changing the distribution of jobs and people mainly in mid-sized municipalities and by a strong collaboration between municipalities. Our results increase the understanding of the complex interactions in urban regions and can lead to recommendations for integrated urban and conservation planning.
  • Sprawl or compactness? How urban form influences urban surface temperatures in Europe
    Item type: Journal Article
    Schwaab, Jonas (2022)
    City and Environment Interactions
    The surface of cities is often warmer than the surface of their surroundings. This phenomenon is known as the surface urban heat island (SUHI) effect and has several adverse implications. Studies have shown that the SUHI effect tends to be weaker if urban form is characterized by sprawl or polycentrism. These findings suggest that urban heat could be mitigated if a city is less compact. By analyzing high-resolution remote-sensing land surface temperature (LST) and land-cover data for 293 European cities, this study shows that — contrary to many previous findings — sprawling or polycentric urban forms do not necessarily lead to a decrease of LSTs over urban areas. In southern European cities, sprawl could even lead to the warming of urban areas during specific daytimes, highlighting the importance of considering environmental and regional contexts when determining the role of urban form in heat mitigation. It is also crucial to consider the predominant type of land cover surrounding a city since sprawl into forested areas could have a very different effect than sprawl into agricultural areas. These results illustrate the complexity of urban form related heat mitigation and that policy- and decision-makers have to consider local and regional contexts when steering urban form.
Publications 1 - 4 of 4