Developing climate-led landscapes and greenery in urban design: a case study at Ipoh, Malaysia

Abstract

Designing urban landscapes for climate change adaptation and mitigation is highly promoted for contemporary urban development. However, the lack of climate-based design knowledge and techniques in existing urban landscape practice has challenged the implementation. This paper, therefore, introduced climate-led as a practical approach for urban landscape design to overcome such a dilemma. This approach was results-oriented with integrated use of microclimate, thermal comfort, and GIS modelling and simulation tools. Through the computer-based scenarios building and comparison, this paper has analyzed and figured out efficient landscape designs for microclimate and thermal comfort improvement in Ipoh, Malaysia. In this case, shading most determined the level of cooling and pedestrian thermal comfort, leading the effective street tree planting became an essential measure in the tropical climate-led plan. Besides, this study found that wind did not positively influence thermal comfort due to site characteristic at a particular time, in contrast with other hot regions. In conclusion, developing climate-led landscape and greenery in urban design is a functional initiative for urban cooling and sustainable urban development. Furthermore, the application of modelling and simulation methods in urban landscape design can reduce the possibility of failure in practice, thereby promising urban efficiency in response to climate change.

Simulation of the heat mitigation potential of unsealing measures in cities by parameterizing grass grid pavers for urban microclimate modelling with ENVI-met (V5)

“…Measurement and simulation studies are in agreement 370 with the magnitude of the cooling effect of the newly-developed GGP parameterization for ENVI-met in this paper, like the analyses for Rome and Fondi/Italy of BATTISTA et al (2022) andPELUSO et al (2022). The results from Ipoh and Malacca/Malaysia show very similar maximum surface temperatures effects, but only about half of the cooling effect for the maximum air temperature (SAITO et al, 2015;TEOH et al, 2022). It should be noted that the analyses in Ipoh only examined the joint effect of GGPs with roadside trees.…”

“…CC BY 4.0 License. and effect relationships between GGPs and temperature cannot be determined (TEOH et al, 2022). Our literature review shows that there is a high research interest in cooling potentials of GGP unsealings, but until now, no combined parameterization of GGPs has been developed for microclimate modelling.…”

“…Those studies using ENVI-met focused on research areas in Italy (BATTISTA et al, 2022;BATTISTI et al, 2018;PELUSO et al, 70 2022), Malaysia (SAITO et al, 2015;TEOH et al, 2022), China (JIA & WANG, 2021), Austria (REZK, 2021) and Switzerland (HOFFMANN & GEISSLER, 2022). There is no ENVI-met study simulating GGP effects for Germany yet.…”

“…There is no ENVI-met study simulating GGP effects for Germany yet. TEOH et al (2022) used the surface layer for grass already parameterized in ENVI-met for the GGPs. REZK (2021) adjusted the albedo and root depth of the pre-parameterized grass.…”