Cool Cities: Towards Sustainable and Healthy Urban Environments

The urban heat island (UHI) is, arguably, the most important contributor to urban overheating, which has various adverse effects on (I) urban dwellers (e.g., increased heat stress and heat-related mortalities) (II) the urban building stock (e.g., increased space cooling energy consumption during the summertime) and  (III) the overall urban climate (e.g., synergies with atmospheric pollution in urban areas). The ongoing urbanisation seen in many parts of the world is likely to exacerbate the said effects of UHI, further deteriorating the quality of life in urban areas. Moreover, UHI is mainly dependent on the specific characteristics (e.g., topography, synoptic and mesoscale circulations, land use patterns etc.,) of a given locality, making the "one size fits all" approach to tackling UHI nearly impossible. Consequently, comprehensive and interdisciplinary research attempting to understand the UHI phenomenon, which is somewhat complex and multi-faceted, is essential for designing sustainable and salutogenic cities. To that end, we invite papers for the special issue on the following themes;

- Impact of UHI on the mortality and morbidities of vulnerable and low-income populations

- Interactions between UHI and urban atmospheric pollution

- Impact of UHI on local/global energy use

- Advanced modelling of UHI

- The assessment of UHI in developing countries

- Current UHI adaptation and mitigation strategies

We are interested in abroad range of UHI-related studies from various parts of the world so as to shine more light on the peculiarity and seriousness of UHI-related issues and hopefully help enrich the ongoing scientific discourse on the urban liveability agenda and science-driven urban design policies/practices.

Dr. Jack Ngarambe
Prof. Dr. Geun Young Yun
Prof. Dr. Jin Woo Moon

Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Atmosphere is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.