Urban heat island, urban climate maps and urban development policies and action plans

Abstract

Abstract This paper aims at drawing attention to the deficiencies of urban heat island (UHI) mitigation strategies and urban climate maps (UCMs) towards practical implementations and efficient interventions in urban development policies and action plans (UDP/AP). The paper critically reviews the knowledge of the UHI and UCMs to identify the major shortcomings in the production of action plans. The shortcomings are identified in three aspects including (1) active involvement in UDP/AP (2) urban managerial and governmental actions, and (3) public engagement and participation. More specifically, it is first discussed that the current synthesizing paradigm of UCMs and UHI studies only considers the physical aspects of the problem/solution. Second, climate recommendations have paid a little attention to the imperative role, capacities and motivations of urban governance and managerial organizations. Third, mitigation strategies have been proposed without considering public needs and willingness. To overcome these challenges, a collaborative platform of UCM systems should be developed through a holistic approach. Such platform should provide a ground for efficient interventions in UDP/AP as well as interactions of all actors and indicators. To this end, the technical challenges of the UHI studies and UCM systems to link with UDP/AP are discussed. Second, UCMs should explicitly define the role of urban climate governance, prioritize the actions and state the policy agendas with regard to local government capacities and motivational elements. Finally, local communities’ needs’ and stockholders’ opinions should be involved in the synthesizing process. As a potential solution, need-base approaches and weighing systems should be further developed to consider all urban actors’ perspectives.