A review of the historical development of urban climatic map study

Abstract

More than half of the world population now lives in urban areas (UNFPA, 2007). By 2030, nearly 60 per cent of the earth’s population will be urban dwellers (UN, 2008). The rapid urbanisation in the past half a century has not only brought new immigrants into the urban areas, but has also gradually changed the physical urban environment. Both the landscape transformation and the associated activities of urban areas have modified the city’s meteorology and urban climate (Esser, 1989; Lambin et al., 1999; Zhou et al., 2004; Lam, 2006; He et al., 2007), especially the climate below the rooftops of buildings or the urban canopy layer (UCL)(Oke, 1987; Mills, 1997; AMS, 2010). In this layer, the climate is dominated by micro-scale processes and exchanges and is highly relevant to human comfort and the environmental health of the city (Leung et al., 2008; Jendritzky et al., 2010). There has been a worldwide vision to design cities that are sustainable, healthy, comfortable, and even enjoyable (UN, 2008). To achieve this goal, it is necessary to understand and apply urban climatic information in the urban planning and design process (Mills et al., 2010). However, urban climatic consideration thus far has had a low impact on planning (de Schiller and Evans, 1991; Eliasson, 2000). There is a need to bridge the gap between urban climatology, town planning, and urban design, and to transfer the climatic knowledge into planning languages (de Schiller and Evans, 1991; Eliasson, 2000; Alcoforado et al., 2009). One important link is to create an information platform for interdisciplinary communication and collaboration.