Thermal comfort in outdoor spaces. Impact of different urban design strategies for arid regions

ERICA CORREA; M. ANGÉLICA RUIZ; ALICIA CANTÓN; GRACIELA LESINO

Johannesburg, South Africa

Congreso; ISES Solar World Congress 2009 - 29th Biennial Congress of the International Solar Energy Society; 2009

ISES

The rise of “sustainable development” as a popular concept has resumed the discussion about the form ofcities. Certainly, it has motivated planners and experts in different disciplines to seek forms of humansettlements that meet sustainability requirements and enable built environments to function in a moreconstructive way than they do at present. In this sense, the understanding and assessment of the thermalbehavior of urban areas is a basic need to go over strategies that help developing a bioclimatic urbandesign, that is, adapted to the climatic characteristics of the city site location. This assessment includes, ofcourse, the contribution of the urban green structures.In this study, the reference case is Mendoza`s Metropolitan Area (MMA), Argentina; located in a seismicand semiarid region. The urban model presents wide road channels and different tree species along thestreets in opposition to the compact city model. This paper evaluates the impact over outdoor thermalcomfort produced by the combination of low building densities; different widths of circulation channels(30, 20 and 16 meters) and diverse forest species magnitudes in summer. Eighteen cases have beenassessed using the COMFA (Comfort Formula) method.The final goal is to establish the interrelationships among these urban variables, so as to obtain theiroptimal combination for thermal comfort in outdoor spaces, and to minimize energy consumption and itssubsequent pollution emissions.