How to meet an increasing concern of citizens in a city climate

Abstract

The application of climatological knowledge to building design and urban planning is not only a problem of communication and understanding between meteorologists, civil engineers, architects and urban planners. At present it is increasingly a problem of knowledge transfer to laymen, of discussing and arguing with representatives of building owners, tenants or the general public. This is true for cities in highly industrialized and populated regions in temperate climates as in Central Europe, and also for the rapidly growing cities and settlements in less-developed countries in subtropical or tropical areas.In both cases, administrations have tried to put through the results of centralized planning by experts with decreasing success. Decisions often have been the outcome of simple additive weighting methods applied according to a recipe with a set of objectives, adopted and predetermined by the administration. In the future, the participation of citizens and representatives of various interested groups in the planning process should be used as an opportunity to foster the role of climatological concerns. The appropriate ways for communication and for decision-making by discussion, learning, selecting and eliminating possible solutions in a stepwise process are treated and illustrated by examples.