Environmental Retrofitting, Fighting Urban Heat Island Toward NEZ Sustainable Smart Cities

Abstract

AbstractThe discovery of the physical phenomenon of heat island dates back to 1833 when Luke Howard undertakes on the air temperature in London and its surroundings. His research showed how, already at that time, winds get stopped and pulled up by the intensive urbanization, reducing the quality of the outdoor environment while turning cold into warmer areas within the urban settlements (Mills 2008). The last centuries confirmed how intense urbanization can make the temperature rise to several degrees, activating a vicious circle where car and energy use become more necessary, and co-cause for further temperature arise. No doubt, cities are—literally—heat islands if compared to their surroundings. The crescent environmental stress is the main challenge while targeting quality of life in today’s urbanization, in order to enable the public space to welcome citizens and encourage their outdoor activities. It requires a consistent commitment to the built environment and the awareness of the main role of public space as an interactive platform for a sustainable and human-centered smart city. As matter of fact, it is the public space where social life shapes and grows. The public space was often defined as the smart city's interface. So, smart cities need to generate and maintain a welcoming, healthy, livable, vibrant public space to have a reason to be. The scope of smart cities is to create a space first, the infrastructure to strengthen the connections among people and between people to the place. (Petrucci 2022) Cities worldwide must respond to a growing and diverse population, ever-shifting economic conditions, new technologies, and a changing climate. The task becomes especially challenging in extreme climate environments, such as in the Far East, in the African continent, or in the GCCs, which are also the countries where the most extensive urbanizations are taking place. Both intense urbanization growth and extreme weather conditions make here mandatory, more than everywhere else, an integrated strategy to achieve livable and sustainable cities through the fight against the urban heat island.