Urban Form and Thermally Comfortable Pedestrian Streetscapes in Post-COVID Mendoza, Argentina

MARÍA BELÉN SOSA; ERICA CORREA; MARÍA ALICIA CANTÓN

Simposio; Epidemic Urbanism; 2021

Since the pandemic the way to use outdoor spaces in cities has changed. The walkabledistance to daily activities is a commodity that not always has been contemplated bycity shapers. A well-design streetscape that considers, beyond other factors, themicroclimatic conditions of a city can help to promote and increase the walkability. Inthis sense, urban form results a powerful tool to achieve more livable communities inthe post-COVID age. Particularly in arid zones, where the extreme weather conditionsin summer decrease the use of outdoor spaces. In Mendoza Metropolitan Area, Argentina, our research group has developed a series of urban design proposals, atneighborhood scale, in order to reduce the outdoor air temperature in the summerseason. The design proposals have combined three strategies to reduce urban warming:urban form, albedo, and trees. The ?form? strategy considers neighborhood pattern, street and sidewalk width, street orientation, and building height. The ?albedo?strategy improved the values of the exposed materials. And the ?tree? strategyconsider the implantation distance and the forestall magnitude. The neighborhood airtemperature was obtained by microclimatic simulations in ENVI-met softwareadjusted with in-situ microclimatic data from three reference points in Mendoza. Theresults shown it is possible improve the outdoor thermal conditions, increase thewalkability and reduce the car and public transport dependency by applying somedesign strategies. But the biggest challenge in order to improve urban thermalconditions is promote and generate proper urban regulations adapted to regional scale.