Impact of the urban design strategies on the urban climate in arid regions. The case of Mendoza's Metropolitan Area, in Argentina

ERICA N. CORREA; CARLO DE ROSA; GRACIELA LESINO

Ghardaïa

Conferencia; International Conference Living in hot Deserts: Is a sustainable urban design still possible in arid regions; 2006

The Polytechnic School of Architecture and Urban Design of Algiers (EPAU – Algeria), in collaboration with the Superior National School of Architecture of Toulouse (France), with the support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the UNESCO

Many populations of the world live in desert regions. Presently, about 500 million people live in deserts and desert’s margins, totalizing an 8% of the world’s population. In order to survive in deserts, human beings have compensated their poor capacity for morphologic and physiological adaptation to desert climates with a diversity of behavioural, cultural and technological adaptations. In the city-planning conception of Mendoza’s Metropolitan Area, which is located in an arid region, an intense urban forest has been used as tool for the bioclimatic conditioning of open urban spaces. But the use of this strategy has produced that sky view factor diminish and landscape roughness increases in urban canyons, reducing their radiative and convective cooling capacities at night, as a consequence, the urban heat island intensity rises by 10ºC. The characterization of the urban heat island is fundamental information to assess the increase in energy consumption and environmental pollution associated to the urbanization phenomenon. Starting from this analysis and diagnosis, it is possible to develop a strategic planning for the city’s growth. Therefore this paper analyzes the urban climate’s characteristics of Mendoza’s Metropolitan Area and identifies how of urban design’s strategies implemented in the study area have impacted on the local climate.