Cities and Urban Green

Abstract

Cities are known to induce so called “urban heat island” effects. Therefore climate change will have a significant impact in urban environments upon thermal comfort. As urban green can mitigate local temperature peaks, green space is an essential feature in cities and one option to prevent decline of thermal comfort and related effects. Direct climate induced damages on urban green overlap with urban environmental stressors which are judged currently to be more critical than climate damages. Indirect climate induced damages of urban green will enforce subsequent negative effects of local temperature increase in cities: e.g. on health, tourism and urban economy which are difficult to delimit and quantify. The one robust option to quantify climate change damages used in this chapter is the preventative cost approach, i.e. damages are monetized by the level of costs that measures would imply to prevent increasing urban heat islands (here focusing on construction and maintenance of additional urban green).