Spatial Planning Of Towns And Municipalities Needs A Fundamental Change
It is wonderful to be part of the scientific research team of the consortium implementing the LAND4CLIMATE project, which is funded by HORIZON EUROPE. The team faces a number of challenges with the search for answers to how the use of the earth's surface which changes the temperature regime in the environment in which we live.
We tend to say that we live in thermal bubbles/heat islands that extend over the city, in which the internal temperature is higher than the external, so temperature of the country outside the city. It is commonly said that the temperature inside the city is also 3–5 degrees Celsius higher than the temperature outside the city. In short, it can be so, that is why it is interesting to look at specific areas that are part of the necessary infrastructure of the environment.
We often go to shops and preferably to shopping centres where we can buy almost everything. In the summer heat, we would prefer to park the car in the shade of a tree so that after shopping we can get into a car with a pleasant climate. Therefore, we are looking for a shade for the car. We probably won't miss a place in the shade, because this is how all visitors to the shopping centre think. And so we will also park in the Sun. I did it on June 26.
After shopping, in the heat, I realised that it was necessary to document the unbearable heat in the car park. I took out my phone with a thermal camera, and it showed a surface temperature of 53.4 degrees Celsius. In a short while, the sky became overcast. The surface temperature of the car park immediately dropped by almost 4 degrees.
The car park in front of the shopping centre was built, with the acceptance of all certificates and the obligation to plant trees. Of course trees irrigated with imported water by tankers. Those trees are over 20 years old and look like they were planted yesterday. This is for a simple reason, they suffer. The trees have little water, the permeable area around a tree is too small. And so the trees suffer by water stress permanently. Dead trees are replaced with new, less demanding species, instead of planning suitable conditions for tree growth.
And that is also the reason why the LAND4CLIMATE project was created, to give answers to such anomalies, to bring solutions that give us answers to how to define, design and use the landscape, so that we do not create dry temperature islands in cities, but develop territories in such a way, to raise environmental quality standards in the ongoing climate change. Parking spaces in cities are a typical example of extreme overheating.
Please see the thermal pictures with measured temperatures below.
This article was written by LAND4CLIMATE consortium partner NGO People and Water.
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