A Study on the Summer Microclimate Environment of Public Space and Pedestrian Commercial Streets in Regions with Hot Summers and Cold Winters

• Main Authors: Liu, J. (Author), Sun, Z. (Author), Tang, H. (Author), Zheng, B. (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI 2023
• Subjects: commercial street; outdoor microclimate; PET; public space
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher; View in Scopus

 Featured Application: This study can guide urban planners and urban designers to think about how to improve thermal comfort by optimizing street flow lines, the locations of open space, and greening arrangements in pedestrian commercial streets, especially those in the hot summer and cold winter regions of China. Pedestrian commercial streets are an important part of a city. However, the open outdoor street is easily affected by the external climate, and a poor microclimate environment can indirectly affect the volume of visitors to the commercial street. This paper takes pedestrian commercial streets in regions with hot summers and cold winters as the research object in order to obtain reasonable prototypes of street space. Adopting the experimental method of controlling variables, microclimate simulation analysis is conducted on different street flow lines, various locations of open space, and the different greening arrangements of typical street spaces. This paper also proposes design strategies for improving the microclimate environment, such as reserving ventilation passages in the dominant wind direction, setting up air buffer areas to increase the “wind storage” effect, building an open space in the upwind direction to increase the “wind absorption” effect, preventing planar greening space from hindering airflow in streets with poor ventilation, and establishing planar green space in the upwind direction to increase the coverage of the cooling effect of plants. In this paper, comfort in the outdoor microclimate comfort is taken into consideration in commercial street design, aiming to achieve the revitalization of commercial streets through “micro renovation” and provide some reference for the future design of commercial streets. © 2023 by the authors.