Urban Structure and Its Environment

Abstract

The urban structure has an important influence on the thermal environment. Exploring the relationship between urban structural elements and thermal environment is helpful to find the objective laws between them, which has great significance for rational urban layout and improvement of climate comfort. In this chapter, urban structure is divided into three categories: function, morphology, and underlying surface. The calculation methods of the seven structural indicators under these three categories are discussed in detail. Then, in order to explore the spatial differences of urban thermal environment, taking Xi’an, a metropolis in northern China as an example, 55 fixed sample points were selected, and a 3-year field measurement of the thermal environment data in summer and winter was carried out. Based on the ArcGIS system, the meteorological data and the urban characteristic data are integrated to allocate more meteorological data, and the interpolation method is applied to express the meteorological single factor spatially. Then, the correlation between the calculated seven urban spatial structure indicators and the thermal environment parameters after interpolation is analyzed separately, and the relationship between them is discussed. Finally, the urban climate recommendation map is drawn, and the urban spatial structure optimization strategy from the perspective of urban thermal environment is formulated.