Trees and the urban forest are essential cooling devices for adapting cities to urban heat. This chapter explores the potential of these solutions to adapt to climate change while addressing essential considerations and challenges within the urban design domain. Thermal mechanisms through which trees contribute to cooling urban environments are presented, ranging from shade provision and evapotranspiration at the scale of the tree to the scale of a tree ensemble, area, and urban forest network. Principles for careful green space planning and strategically placing trees are introduced with a specific focus on the spatial factors that optimize their cooling effects and maximize their benefits. Additionally, this chapter highlights the value of onsite measurements in assessing the magnitude of trees’ cooling potential. Data collection methods are introduced to evaluate the impact of trees and other nature-based interventions on temperature, humidity, and wind patterns. Finally, this chapter discusses the complex nature of urban environments, related limitations and opportunities for enlarging, maintaining and integrating green areas into densely built areas. ... Read more

In recent years, extreme temperatures have gained significant attention in urban studies, leading to the search for various adaptation and mitigation measures. While many studies employ heat-related indicators to assess climate-related health impacts, a better understanding of the multi-dimensional nature of these indicators can enhance their integration into urban policies, planning and design. This research aims to examine various dimensions of urban heat stress in built environments, using a systematic review of scientific articles (n = 146) and consequently, establishing a framework for effectively stratifying examples of related indicators across different dimensions. The results showcase dimensions including demographic, economic, health, urban climate, social, urban morphology, and institutional. However, literature disproportionately emphasizes demographic, health and climate dimensions, while social, urban morphology and institutional ones receive comparatively less attention. On the other hand, the co-occurrence analysis reveals connections among these dimensions and their related indicators, underlining the need for a holistic understanding of heat stress impacts. Additionally, the spatial distribution of the selected papers brings attention to the lack of studies in the regions identified as most exposed according to the Koppen Climate Classification. Accordingly, we advocate for more multidimensional and context-specific studies that bridge existing gaps. This research provides valuable insights for policymakers, planners, urban designers and researchers on advancing the understanding of urban heat stress in built environments and its impact on urban healh. ... Read more

Heatwaves are no longer rare anomalies in temperate cities; they are lived, negotiated, and unevenly endured. Yet behavioural adaptation—a vital first line of defence—remains underexplored. Drawing on a sequential mixed-methods design integrating in-depth interviews (N = 21) and a nationwide survey (N = 1,849) across Dutch urban density gradients, this study shows that behavioural adaptation is less a matter of individual choice than of social, structural, and spatial constraint. Homeowners leveraged their control over private spaces to adopt both active and passive technological adjustments, achieving higher adaptation scores. Tenants, constrained by housing tenure, disproportionately relied on cultural adjustments rooted in social ties and experiential knowledge. Residents of very highly urbanised areas reported higher indoor temperatures and demonstrated the lowest adaptation scores, revealing density-driven limits to coping capacity. Gender and household composition further influenced adaptive capacity, with women and multi-person households displaying consistently stronger responses. By centring behavioural adaptation, the study identifies key barriers and exposes the mechanisms through which adaptation inequality takes shape in temperate urban settings. ... Read more

Residential environments are central to addressing urban heat stress for vulnerable populations and are prime target areas for implementing climate adaptation strategies. The reliance on urban heat island (UHI) intensity mapping alone has been argued to provide limited guidance for adaptation efforts, whereas linking heat patterns to the built environment characteristics through frameworks such as Local Climate Zones (LCZ) provides actionable insights for developing neighborhood cooling strategies. However, the widely used LCZ maps have a few limitations, such as misrepresenting variation within types because they cannot account for sub-classes beyond the standardized framework. This paper presents an unsupervised clustering approach to identify residential typo-morphologies across 99 Dutch cities, enhancing their relevance for urban heat vulnerability assessments. The analysis reveals that five morphological and canopy parameters (FSI, GSI, OSR, Havg, and FVC) selected from 17 parameters are sufficient to identify nine distinct residential typo-morphologies relatable to LCZs within 100 m × 100 m grid cells. The evaluations demonstrate that our approach detects underrepresented LCZ types and reveals new sub-classes absent from standard LCZ classifications. Key findings include detection of high-density areas (LCZ 42) reflecting recent urban densification with one of the highest UHImax next to LCZ 2 (4.2–4.9 K), and vegetation-differentiated variants within sparse and low-rise categories LCZ 9D and LCZ 6D, distinguished by distinctive UHImax (0.5–0.7 K) higher compared to their reference base types. Notably, tree coverage remains low across low-rise and compact typo-morphologies, revealing substantial opportunities for greening interventions. This data-driven refinement preserves LCZ's global comparability while considering local specificity, providing improved frameworks to inform targeted climate adaptation strategies in residential environments. ... Read more

Part of TU Delft’s Climate Action program is developing climate action pedagogies at the classroom and course levels. This contribution presents our open pedagogical language that shares evidence-informed instructional design principles and teaching practices in which students not only learn about urban climate change and sustainability but, in particular, about intervening in society or industry (action!) and its effects in everyday practice. In addition to technical system knowledge, this type of education provides students with crucial ecological and social entrepreneurship skills.

The building blocks of this language are so-called pedagogical patterns, which describe a specific (set of) instructional design principle(s) of a course or classroom setting. Each pattern is presented in a comparable way via a given template that asks for [i] a title, [ii] an illustration, [iii] a hypothesis or statement on the value this pattern brings, [iv] the evidence from teaching practice and/or the educational scientific knowledge supporting the pattern, [v] a brief description of practical implications when implementing or using the pattern, [vi] the relation to other patterns. Pedagogical patterns are not prescriptive; they show what educators could do pedagogically.

Our first pedagogical patterns are based on the teaching practices of our Delft Climate Action educators and focus on:
*citizen science approaches focusing on the adaptation of the urban area to the weather and climate of tomorrow.
*interdisciplinarity for climate adaptivity in urbanised delta regions, where students work for and with a local government or stakeholder related to urban heat, drought, air pollution, and flooding.
* entrepreneurship in the built environment, where students develop a design and entrepreneurial plan for a sustainability challenge.
* action research focusing on socio-spatial inequality, diversity, resilience, and well-being for a climate challenge in a collaborative way with practitioners and community members. ... Read more

As heatwaves in cities intensify, understanding how urban residents adapt to extreme heat is critical. Yet, climate literature predominantly focuses on exposure-centric, spatial approaches, while bottom-up, people-first perspectives remain underrepresented. This study employs a sequential mixed-method approach to investigate behavioural adaptation practices among urban dwellers in the Netherlands.

In the first phase of the study, semi-structured, in-depth interviews (n=21) identified key themes that informed a Likert-scale survey instrument employed in the second phase to test a set of hypotheses. Subsequently, in phase two, a nationwide survey (n=1,849) across three urban typologies—Extremely Urban, Strongly Urban, and Moderately Urban—captured perceptions and behavioural practices related to heatwave adaptation.

Findings indicate that residents in highly dense, extremely urban areas have a lower behavioural adaptation score compared to the other two urban types. Additionally, ownership emerges as a key factor in the adaptation process; where homeowners prioritize technological adjustments, renters rely more on personal and cultural adjustments. In terms of risk perception, statistically significant differences exist between adults living alone and those living with a partner or family.

The tested hypotheses provide a nuanced understanding of specific vulnerability to heatwaves in the Netherlands, offering insights that can inform targeted urban design and planning strategies at the local level. ... Read more

Urban heatwaves pose significant challenges to public health and well-being. Quantitative approaches focusing on heat hazards dominate the literature, while qualitative studies, particularly in temperate climates, remain underrepresented. Drawing upon the case of Rotterdam, a highly socially and spatially diverse city with a temperate climate, this research investigates residents’ everyday lived experiences during heat events and their underlying coping mechanisms. Employing a hybrid thematic analysis based on 21 semi-structured in-depth interviews, the research discusses residents’ behavioural adaptation, encompassing personal, technological, and cultural adjustments, along with their associated spatial dependencies. Findings indicate that adaptation practices occur across various spatial scales, with personal and technological adjustments primarily reliant on the house unit, while cultural adjustments extend to neighbourhood scales and beyond. Notably, control over the
household unit emerges as a significant factor in shaping spatial dependence, highlighting an often-overlooked aspect of inequality. The study offers a conceptual framework for exploring residents’ behavioural adaptation to extreme heat, facilitating the formulation of equitable and tailored planning strategies for temperate climates. ... Read more

In recent decades, the increasing frequency, intensity, and duration of heatwaves generated by climate change has posed significant challenges to public health, particularly in urban areas. Despite extensive research on the impacts of heatwaves on human health, there is still a need for enhanced understanding of how, and to what extent, the spatial attributes of urban environments exacerbate these effects at the very local scale. This research addresses this gap and emphasises the importance of analysing the relationship among urban form, climate and health through high resolution geo-spatial data. By investigating the spatial correlations between geolocated cardiovascular and respiratory emergency calls, the modelled universal thermal climate index (UTCI) and selected socio-demographic factors during the summer of 2022 in Milan, this study aims to enhance our understanding of the complex interaction among heat, the built environment, and specific health outcomes. The findings identify geographical locations where emergency calls occur more frequently and where health concerns emerge during hot spells. Morphological and socio-demographic factors both play a critical role in determining vulnerability to heat stress. The results provide valuable insights for identifying high-risk areas, where tailored interventions in terms of planning, governance and urban design may be implemented to address heat-resilience and health-equity in cities. ... Read more

The urban heat island effect is increasingly affecting the quality of life in cities, and detailed data is crucial in designing mitigation policies. However, weather stations are predominantly situated outside urban environments, limiting their ability to represent the varying air temperatures within street canyons. This data paper addresses this limitation by presenting a dataset of the modeled daily maximum urban heat island (UHImax) effect across 99 Dutch municipalities during the summer of 2023. This is achieved by implementing a semi-empirical equation that incorporates readily available meteorological variables and two key urban morphological indicators, namely the sky view factor and fractional vegetation cover. Two primary datasets are presented: (1) a high-resolution dataset of modeled UHImax, and (2) a sky view factor dataset. Both datasets are provided in GeoTIFF format at a 5-meter spatial resolution. Additionally, this paper presents a straightforward methodology for obtaining UHImax values for other periods. The datasets and accompanying methodology provide valuable resources for advancing urban climate research, urban planning and heat mitigation strategies in the Netherlands. ... Read more

Addressing high-temperature exposure in cities requires understanding multiple environmental dimensions, with urban morphology playing a central role. Urban morphology—which include building density, height, and arrangement—significantly influences microclimatic conditions and opportunities for adaptation. A widely used framework for studying these relationships is the Local Climate Zones (LCZ), which provides a solid theoretical foundation for understanding urban climate variations. However, LCZ categories are often idealized and may not accurately reflect the complexity of real-world environments, particularly when attempting to describe both morphological and thermal properties simultaneously.

Although urban form and thermal behavior are inherently interrelated, similar urban forms can exhibit different thermal responses depending on factors like vegetation cover, impervious surfaces, and building materials. To better represent real-world variability, separating morphological classifications from thermal characteristics allows for an analysis that accounts for these differences.

To address these challenges, we develope an approach that generates empirically derived urban morhophological types while maintaining connections to LCZ categories. Our tool systematically classifies urban morphological types for fine-grained, nationwide assessments, enabling consistent comparisons across diverse Dutch urban residential areas. This approach uses readily available geospatial data and applies unsupervised machine learning techniques to identify urban morphological typologies. By standardizing the classification process into 100 x 100 m grid cells from Statistics Netherlands, our method provides a consistent spatial and temporal framework that transcends changing administrative boundaries.

Our approach helps streamline vulnerability analysis by facilitating the intersection of multiple environmental and social dimensions. We demonstrate the tool's utility through an explorative analysis that identifies which socio-economic groups reside in neighborhoods with high heat exposure, considering both morphological types and additional factors influencing heat exposure. This tool provides urban planners and researchers with an empirically-grounded framework for identifying priority areas in existing settlements for scalable adaptation interventions across different urban contexts. ... Read more

Heatwaves in urbanized areas, even in temperate regions like the Netherlands, are getting serious attention. The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute predicts more frequent and intense heat events in the future. Studies have explored how Dutch cities contribute to heatwaves and suggested design and planning responses to mitigate their effects. However, a review of heatwave research in the Netherlands specifically focusing on the built environment has hardly been reported in the literature. This study aims to provide such a review utilizing the vulnerability framework. Following the PRISMA protocol, 57 articles are analysed based on the components of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity within the vulnerability framework. Subsequently, findings have been classified into five built environment scales - block, neighbourhood, district, city, and region - to critically reflect upon the extent to which the studies address various vulnerability components and the specific scales they primarily focus on. Results demonstrate that most of the studies concentrate on the hazard itself and its spatial distribution from a macro perspective on a city and regional scale. The review underlines the necessity of micro-level research on the phenomena, incorporating people's everyday experiences and resilience during heat events to find context-specific adaptation and mitigation strategies. ... Read more

Morphological characteristics of cities significantly influence urban heat island intensities and thermal responses to heat waves. Form attributes such as density, compactness, and vegetation cover are commonly used to analyse the impact of urban morphology on overheating processes. However, the use of abstract large-scale classifications hinders a full understanding of the thermal trade-off between single buildings and their immediate surrounding microclimate. Without analytical tools able to capture the complexity of cities with a high resolution, the microspatial dimension of urban climate phenomena cannot be properly addressed. Therefore, this study develops a new method for numerical identification of types, based on geometrical characteristics of buildings and climate-related form attributes of their surroundings in a 25m and 50m radius. The method, applied to the city of Rotterdam, combines quantitative descriptors of urban form, mapping GIS procedures, and clustering techniques. The resulting typo-morphological classification is assessed by modelling temperature, wind, and humidity during a hot summer period, in ENVI-met. Significant correlations are found between the morphotypes’ characteristics and local climate phenomena, highlighting the differences in performative potential between the classified urban patterns. The study suggests that the method can be used to provide insight into the systemic relations between buildings, their context, and the risk of overheating in different urban settings. Finally, the study highlights the relevance of advanced mapping and modelling tools to inform spatial planning and mitigation strategies to reduce the risk of urban overheating.
... Read more

Rapid urbanization and densification processes are changing microclimatic environments in cities around the world. Even though previous studies have demonstrated the impact of urban microclimate on space cooling and heating demand, modeling tools employed to support the design process largely overlook microclimatic conditions in assessing building energy performance, making use of data from weather stations often located in rural areas. This paper presents a computational approach for the quantitative analysis of building energy demand at the district scale, including interdependent factors such as local air temperature, relative humidity and wind speed, diversity in building geometry and materials. The method, which couples the microclimate model ENVI-met and the district-scale energy simulation tool City Energy Analyst, is applied to a case study in Zurich, Switzerland, in order to analyze the energy performance of the area on a hot summer day. The study contributes to advance a coupling approach between a microclimate simulation and an energy tool at the district scale. The results showed that the coupled assessment approach can deal with complex interactions between geometry, building materials and energy systems. The consideration of local microclimatic conditions led to a 5% increase in the space cooling demand on the selected day, while the simulated peak cooling load for each building was 8% higher on average. The variation in the space cooling demand was found to be mainly due to an increase in latent cooling demand. Moreover, the coupling method allowed a detailed analysis of energy demand variation at the building level showing that, when considering the local climate patterns, the space cooling demand of the individual buildings varied between −5% and +14% on the selected day. The proposed method represents a next step to reflect the mutual interactions between buildings and microclimate in urban districts and aims at supporting decision-making in the design process. ... Read more

The urban heat island is especially challenging in the Netherlands and other northern European countries, which are experiencing higher temperatures due to climate change. This chapter explores the effects of climate change for the urban environment and provides tools for urban design and strategies for implementation. It gives an introduction of the problem field and a climate change effect, and presents a review of climate adaptation measures. Researchers at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands led by Laura Kleerekoper explore implementation strategies for Dutch cities that are applicable in similar climate zones. The strategies are grouped into four broad categories: vegetation, water, built form, and materials. Influencing the built form of a city from a policy standpoint is rather difficult and more using climatic parameters. The chapter discusses a case study to apply these implementation strategies to redesign an existing neighbourhood in Utrecht that is vulnerable to higher temperatures. ... Read more

In the design practice simulation methods are already widely used to support the understanding of energy performance and to help designers in reducing energy demand during the design process. However, energy simulation tools are largely limited to the individual building level, and urban microclimate conditions and
variations in local wind, solar radiation, and air temperature patterns in which buildings express their energy performance are largely overlooked. In order to include microclimatic data in the computation of space cooling and heating consumption and enlarge the scale of analysis from single buildings to district scale, a new simulation method has been developed. The proposed coupling procedure links the microclimate software ENVI-met and the City Energy Analyst energy simulation tool and it is employed in the energy assessment of a urban re-development project in the city of Zurich, Switzerland. The results show that, considering microclimatic boundary conditions, the average hourly energy loads vary for daytime and night-time peaks and moreover a variation can be noticed in terms of total space heating and cooling consumption on the hottest and coldest day of a typical year. ... Read more

The climate of a city influences the ways in which its outdoor spaces are used. Especially public spaces intended for use by pedestrians and cyclists, such as parks, squares, residential and shopping streets, and foot- and cycle-paths will be used and enjoyed more frequently when they have a comfortable and healthy climate. Due to a predicted global temperature rise, the climate is likely to be more uncomfortable in the Netherlands, especially in summer, when an increase in heat stress is expected. As the phenomenon of urban heat islands (UHI) aggravates heat stresses, the effects will be more severe in urban environments. Since the spatial characteristics of a city influence its climate, urban design can be deployed to mitigate the combined effects of climate change and UHI's. This paper explores these effects and tries to provide tools for urban design and strategies for implementation. Consequently, the applicability of the design tools is tested in a design for two existing Dutch neighbourhoods. ... Read more

The study presented in this paper is part of a PhD research titled 'Comfortable and Healthy Urban Environments'. This PhD research aims at gaining insight into the relationship between building densities, building patterns, building types on the one hand and the main aspects of the physical urban climate on the other hand: penetration of daylight, solar irradiation of façades and outdoor spaces, wind, air temperature, air quality and (traffic) noise. The research focuses on the first stages of urban design since the decisions regarding urban geometry in those early stages are of great influence on the urban climate in the final design. The urban tissue is therefore reduced to its basic geometries. In this way the conditions for the outdoor climate as well as the base conditions for the indoor climate (at the position of the façade) can be studied. This paper reports on studies into daylight and wind comfort aspects. The research shows that building densities have quite an influence on daylight access and the wind climate within the street. Within a fixed density the choice of building type also has a significant influence. ... Read more