Urban Planning for Climate Adaptation: Assessing the Performance of the Built Environment at a Human Scale

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change has increased the global frequency of extreme weather events that have a significant impact on life in cities, compelling a conceptual adjustment in the way buildings and cities can adapt to these changes. Adapting by design is essential for ensuring our cities and communities remain comfortable and attractive places to live. Moreover, the performance of the built environment is an important concern affecting quality of life and plays a critical role in every urban milieu. Thus, it is crucial to include performative requirements when preparing plans to ensure that the built environment adapts to expected changes, while achieving comfort conditions in new and existing buildings and open spaces between them.

There is an increasing need for assessing building and public open space performance in a human scale. Performance has many aspects and implications: The quality and performance of a building stems from the building itself; however, the surrounding built environment also has a mutual influence on building performance and on the urban environment as a whole. Currently, several models and tools already exist and new ones are being developed with which to separately measure diverse qualities in the built environment, whose results can be visualized in mapping and design plans as well as calculated with numbers and codes.

Urban planning is the main influencer in the development of the built environment; therefore, urban planning for climate adaptation can increase the performance values of the built environment. The public’s successful use and enjoyment of the open space depends heavily on microclimatic conditions that affect thermal comfort. Thus, this Special Issue will focus on but is not limited to climate change and urban planning to increase urban resilience, enhancing the performance of buildings and open spaces, improving environmental quality and comfort, planning regulations and performance, and design tools for sustainable design.

Prof. Dr. Isaac Capeluto
Dr. Dalit Shach-Pinsly
Guest Editors

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