PLANNING FOR COOLER CITIES: A PLAN QUALITY EVALUATION FOR URBAN HEAT ISLAND CONSIDERATION

City strategic plans and enabling policies provide a framework for and inform future development across multiple scales. An exemplar city strategic plan will be one based on evidence, enabled by complementary policy outcomes, and built on the knowledge of the existing landscape. This study evaluated the plan quality of eighteen metropolitan strategic plans for city members in the 100 Resilient Cities initiative. A protocol was developed containing thirty-two indicators to assess plans capacity to act as a strategic planning tool to develop, analyse and implement strategies for the Urban Heat Island (UHI) and climate change mitigation and adaptation. The evaluation indicated that strategies addressing the UHI are rarely included in metropolitan plans. Strategic plans showed a lack of evidence-base to inform the potential actions. Urban warming is often linked to extreme weather events anticipated under climate change, not the UHI as a systemic and increasing phenomenon. We recommend that the pathway to addressing UHI mitigation and adaptation may lie in its nexus to aspects of climate change that concurrently can serve to support liveable and resilient cities.

Format

Journal article

Geographic Coverage

Australia-wide

Journal citation

Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 22:4, 531-553

Notes

Abstract included in PLA’s Research Connections article in Parks and Leisure Australia Vol 24.1 Autumn 2021. ISBN 1446-5604
There is a cost of US$45 to obtain a copy of the article.

Copyright

Approval obtained from publisher to use abstracts only

Authors

Elgendawy, Alaa (Author); Chang , Hsing-Chung (Author); Davies , Peter (Author)

Source

Taylor and Francis: 2020