ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationships between urban form and human comfort. It starts by identifying the ways in which this area of research falls into the gap between theoretical modelling and empirical fieldwork. The argument is that environmental diversity in real urban spaces is the result of a complex urban morphology, and that this diversity correlates with freedom of choice and an overall expression of comfort. Based on the monitoring, surveying and modelling of 14 urban sites in Europe and a database of nearly 10,000 respondents to outdoor comfort surveys, this hypothesis is tested and implications for high-density cities are discussed. Spatial and temporal environmental diversity is defined in simple terms – related to parameters of temperature, sun and wind – using graphic image-processing techniques and computer-aided design (CAD) models by way of demonstration. We aim, thus, to reveal potential relationships between urban climatology, on the one hand, and human comfort in outdoor spaces, on the other. These relationships are mediated by urban built form. Urban forms are described – typically by physical scientists – in various ways, including density (e.g. floor–area ratio); height-to-width ratios; roughness; or as regular arrays of blocks. Alternatively, urban form is represented by case study cities, urban neighbourhoods or public spaces, etc. and thus is also explored in social-scientific terms. Both approaches provide valuable insights: the former offering generic correlations between physical parameters such as height-to-width ratios of streets and the maximum urban heat island temperature, and the latter giving information related to more complex and real urban microclimates as well as the people within them. Both approaches can be useful with respect to urban planning, although there is a risk that the two sectors remain separate: one addressing physical science aspects and the other focusing on the social and behavioural.
