Silvia Tavares

Record cases of skin cancer in Australia emphasizes the urgent need for greater Ultraviolet Radiation (UVR) protection, particularly in public spaces and where children spend time. This study analyses the shade provision of 10 parks in the Sunshine Coast (Australia). Methods used include participant observation, shade analysis and UVR measurements. Results highlighted disparities regarding shade effectiveness. Whilst all parks had some form of built shade, playgrounds with dense trees proved more effective in reducing UVR levels. The size, quality, age and shade cloths' placement also impact its protection capacity. Results indicate the need for greater shade-based regulations to guarantee UVR protection.

Urban Heat Islands (UHI) pose significant challenges to cities, particularly in tropical climates. This study evaluates various UHI mitigation strategies applied to the Central Business District (CBD) of Townsville using ENVI-met v5.5.1. Air temperature (Ta), relative humidity (RH), wind characteristics, Mean Radiant Temperature (MRT), and Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) were assessed under various scenarios. Strategies investigated include increasing natural and artificial shading, altering pavement albedos, and adding green buildings. Results show that on average, Ta in the proposed scenarios were lower than the input data (up to 3.5 °C) except at 1 pm and 4 pm, due to the differences in the urban morphology between the two dataset locations. Adding buildings generated the worst results and negatively impacted night cooling. The other scenarios positively impacted Ta reduction on average (0 °C to 0.21 °C per hour). The built environment significantly altered wind patterns, and added buildings contributed to increased wind speed (up to 1 m/s during the hottest hours). The median MRT increased during the early hours surpassing the health stress threshold (57.1 °C) at 9am, condition which remained until 2 pm, decreasing afterwards. But importantly, an overestimation of MRT was observed due to the topographical characteristics of the site. This study reveals a misconception that the hottest hours are the most harmful to human well-being, as they may vary based on the local climate patterns. Results also demonstrate that while some strategies contribute to temperature reduction, challenges persist, especially during the hottest hours. This work advances UHI mitigation for tropical savanna climates, guiding sustainable urban planning.

Urban climate phenomena significantly affect the well-being of city populations. However, recent studies reveal limited awareness of urban climate among key stakeholders who shape climate adaptation efforts. Communication offers a promising means of addressing this gap and mobilising stakeholders towards effective adaptation. Yet, the effectiveness of communication in engaging these groups remains unclear. This study investigates how urban climate communication functions among key stakeholder groups: citizens, politicians, urban planners and designers, and urban climate experts, and examines its role in fostering awareness and driving action. This study employed a qualitative research design using key informant interviews with 92 experts across nine countries. The findings reveal a widespread need for improved communication, particularly stronger collaboration between urban climate experts and urban planners and designers. These groups hold essential knowledge and complementary expertise and should form closer partnerships with political decision-makers. Interviews revealed that two-thirds of urban planners and designers struggle to translate climate data into actionable strategies, citing inaccessible communication from experts. Two-thirds of respondents also identified a persistent disconnect between policymakers and citizens, resulting in fragmented adaptation efforts. The study underscores the importance of tailored, interactive communication strategies that account for diverse governance structures, socio-economic conditions, and development contexts across the countries examined. The findings highlight the urgency of strengthening urban climate communication to enable more inclusive, coordinated, and effective adaptation responses.

In this paper, we discuss the important role of landscape architecture and urban design in implementing urban heat mitigation strategies. We discuss how these professions relate to and are considered in studies focused on urban climate and outdoor thermal comfort. Strategies available through landscape architecture and urban design are closely associated with an improved urban thermal environment (Chu et al, 2024). Street orientation, building height and density, green cover ratio, building materials, and the shape and size of water bodies can mitigate urban heat by adjusting urban microclimate and reducing energy use (Abd Elraouf et al, 2022; Liu et al, 2022; Xu et al, 2019). In the context of climate change, it is therefore essential to properly design and plan the built environment for mitigating urban heat, and it is increasingly important to ensure effective communication between the science community and built environment professionals.

Extreme heat is currently Australia’s deadliest natural hazard. The intensity of heat events is increasing due to climate change, and further exacerbated by urban heat islands. Urban design and planning solutions can assist in reducing heat-health risks, but they are rarely implemented. Through semi-structured interviews and an online survey, we investigated the role of such solutions in planning and urban design practice in South-East Queensland, Australia. The results showed planning professionals had lower awareness of the role urban design and planning played in heat mitigation and adaptation strategies compared to urban designers and architects. Continued professional development and a greater inclusion of heat mitigation design provisions in Queensland’s planning system and Australian planning education are outlined as future requirements.

In outdoor spaces, people can adapt to urban microclimates even if they are outside comfortable standards. This adaptation needs to be triggered by external motivators – enjoying the city, seeing people, meeting friends, and so forth – and these motivators are culture and place dependent. Relationships between socio-cultural values and adaptation to urban microclimate can inform design to promote adaptive capacity, enhance liveability, and improve climate change adaptation. We use the urban comfort concept, which considers human comfort in open spaces as a result of regional identity and local culture; lifestyle, liveability, and urbanity; and adaptation to microclimate. This study adds to the body of emerging case studies by exploring the local meaning of urban comfort in Aachen (Germany), a multi-cultural city. A mixed-method interpretive research design enhances the understanding of meaning and context. Results suggest that urban comfort is associated with (1) regional identity related to local physical and social landscapes; (2) urban lifestyles, liveability and urbanity concepts associated with compact urban living, public green areas, building design and diversity; (3) adaptive strategies associated with mobility, clothing, and company. We argue that the role these preferences play in place-based adaptation is fundamental for urban sustainability and climate change.

Urban climatic challenges can motivate urban planners and designers to implement urban climate-responsive design strategies. But does this process occur sufficiently, and if not, why? This study explores the implementation of urban climate-responsive design strategies, potential functional and aesthetic conflicts, availability of policy instruments that support implementation, strengths and weaknesses, and missed opportunities for integrating agendas. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts familiar with urban climate-responsive design. The results suggest that greening measures are most often implemented, strategies tend to compete with other land-uses, designers face aesthetic conflicts, and strategies are predominantly mainstreamed within existing policy instruments.

This paper explores multi-method community engagement activities used to quickly and effectively produce an action plan based on city stakeholders’ perceptions and wishes. A UN-Habitat Urban Thinkers Campus (UTC), focused on promoting urban liveability, adopted a methodology aimed to effectively engage participants through the completion of urban diaries prior to the event. Engagement with participants was further enhanced through urban labs and discussions culminating in a Design Sprint, producing meaningful action statements. The methodology was aimed at capturing impressions, concerns and roles of each stakeholder group in producing human-centred urban environments. Results suggest the adopted methodology was successful in producing a clear set of tangible action statements, identified as potentially generating high impact and requiring low effort to be implemented. These readily applicable actions were compiled by the end of a single but intense workday.

This journal section welcomes contributions addressing new knowledge through research, practice examples and experimentation related to public spaces for all. The section calls for contributions to a discourse within and across the nexus of:

- Urban health to enable holistic and equitable communities

- Urban climate analysis and environmental performance concerning, for example, city form, green infrastructure and human thermal comfort

- Exploring urban complexities, particularly regarding the consideration of the system-wide interdependencies of sociotechnical and socioecological relationships.

To date, there is very little discourse and research on public space undertaken from these perspectives and paradigms and their intersection. Hence, we seek contributions that embrace complexity, examine ambiguities and in-betweens, and contradictions in policies. We also welcome experimental methodologies that can have a practical impact and achieve an ontological shift towards transformative change in communities transcending the conceptual Global North and South, East and West dualism. We appreciate theoretical and practical investigations that demonstrate entanglement with multifaceted aspects ranging from visualisation, communication, or arts-based expressions. We seek to explore the environmental, social, and technical conditions that contribute to an urban climate conducive to health and well-being in the broadest sense. Selected contributions and case studies will need to demonstrate the successful application of at least two of the three focus themes. These manuscripts will allow space for discussion regarding scale-ability and practice application to achieve equitable public spaces.

Strategies and guidelines for best practice environmental design typically have a singular focus and intended outcome, for example, green infrastructure management for urban cooling in a hotter climate. However, when applied to specific situations such as aged care, matters such as accessibility, wayfinding, and safety are also critical. Combining various audit tools offer multiple benefits to meet a variety of needs for thermal comfort, health, and well-being, as well as cost-effectiveness. In the absence of such a tool, using a place-based analysis, we developed a novel audit tool for external settings of residential aged care facilities (ACFs) incorporating urban cooling, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), and universal design criteria. To determine how ACFs perform in the face of increased levels of urban heat required evaluation of additional urban cooling measures. The Audit Tool was developed and tested in collaboration with ACFs across subtropical and tropical areas of Australia, varying in climate, scale, and urban density. Quality of life for residents, visitors, and staff of ACFs can be supported by the provision of green infrastructure to improve the thermal comfort of outdoor settings and, if located appropriately, reduce the need for an increase in internal airconditioning. The aim of this article is to propose a user-friendly Hybrid Environmental Design Audit Tool (HEDAT) to support facility managers, planners, and design consultants to inform the prioritization and targeting of interventions and monitoring of implementation and outcomes.