ABSTRACT
The interacting variable forces of wind, precipitation, temperature, humidity and solar radiation are the great climatic forces that have shaped the world’s bio-regions, and to which, historically, all life forms including the human race have adapted. Indeed, it may be said that climate, more than any of the natural systems we have examined in this enquiry, transcends all the boundaries of nature and human activities. It pervades and influences water, plants, wildlife and agriculture. It is the fundamental force that shapes local and regional places and is responsible for the essential differences between them. At the same time human settlement has modified micro-climates to suit particular needs and local conditions. Human comfort, and in some cases survival, have depended on the skill with which building and place-making have been able to adapt to the climatic environment. The modern city has had a greater impact on this environment, on living conditions and attitudes, than at any other time. The old arts of creating felicitous outdoor places that take advantage of climatic elements and the material resources of the landscape seem to have been lost. As pressures for energy conservation and the need for civilizing places to live in become more urgent in the last decade of the twentieth century, we must look to environmentally sounder ways of manipulating the climate of cities than the present total reliance on technological systems. My purpose in this chapter is threefold:
to review the nature of urban climate, and to explore how the outdoors can usefully contribute to urban liveability and conserve the city’s energy;
to bring the various components of natural and human systems into an overall framework for design – seeing the pieces of the puzzle as a whole picture;
to show how the principle of connectedness, embodied in the influences of local climate, has global implications at every level.
