Designing Cooler Cities

This edited book surveys the major sustainability challenges facing Asian cities, in particular those related to urban energy and city cooling. The book discusses the key concepts and issues involved, addressing the three levels of micro (individual buildings), meso (neighbourhoods/districts) and macro (whole or large parts of cities). It illustrates different paradigms of urban development and explores how to create cooler cities by applying integrated sustainable design and planning on all three levels, bridging the gap between specialist approaches by highlighting both built projects, processes, and research. It also raises questions about prevalent paradigms of urban development as well as topics relating to urban district cooling solutions, sustainable construction materials, and processes towards effective delivery of sustainable cities. Providing cutting edge insights into hot climate cities in Asia, this text is also pertinent for the study of cities in other world regions, notably in developing countries, and of broad relevance to sustainable urban planning in all contexts.

Introduction.- Cities, Climate and Cooling.- Case study Chapters: Micro Level.- Reducing Cooling Loads in Hot-Humid Climates: A Best Practice Research Building in China.- In Tune with Nature: A low energy office building in tropical Colombo.- Towards Cooler Buildings: The Case of Thailand.- Case study Chapters: Meso Level.- Cooling with Green Infrastructures: The influence of trees on thermal conditions in tropical urban parks.- Designing Residential Microclimates: Malhar Eco-village in Bangalore, India.- Integrated Urban Design: Study for a Housing District in Ningbo, China.- Case study Chapters: Macro Level.- Modeling City Patterns for Urban Ventilation: Strategies in High Density Areas of Singapore.- “Summoning” wind for urban cooling: Urban wind corridor projects in China.- District Cooling – A Key Solution for Hot Climate Cities: Best practice in Malaysia.Cooler Cities: What Kinds of City?.- Conclusions and Recommendations.