The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect in the context of climate change and temperature fluctuations is an increasing challenge for contemporary cities. Numerous activities focus on mitigation and adaptation to the UHI effect using both appropriately selected design strategies and technological solutions. However, not all of these technologies support the postulates of ecological and low-carbon cities. Their design, implementation, and operation process sometimes causes conflicts or misunderstandings among designers, industry engineers, and residents. The aim of the research was to examine the relationship between UHI effect mitigation, adaptation, and energy efficiency strategies. A further goal was to build a matrix of synergistic elements and conflicts for respective actors and stakeholders, and an analysis of the elitist DAD (Decide-Announce-Defend) method and participatory ADD (Announce-Discuss-Decide) or EDD (Engage-Deliberate-Decide) in dealing with the UHI effect. The literature review and case study analysis methods were applied. In the study, the strategies of five chosen European capitals (Berlin, London, Paris, Vienna, and Warsaw) experiencing a UHI problem were analyzed. As result, a matrix of the most common goal differences of respective stakeholders in dealing with the UHI effect was developed. One of the main conclusions is the necessity of undergoing synergic collaboration between actors that are not cooperating yet, combined with risk analysis and appropriate education at different levels for a successful and socially equal mitigation and adaptation to the UHI effect.

Compact housing structures located in city centers are considered to be the most energy and environmentally effective, mainly due to the access to services, transport networks and municipal infrastructures. There is the question of why so many of the acknowledged ecological housing complexes are located on the outskirts of cities or suburbs. Numerous cities decide to introduce strategies either to densify city centers, hoping to improve energy efficiency. The Tricity metropolitan area is a special case undergoing dynamic transformation, and its development overlaps with the processes of both planned densification of the center as well as uncontrolled suburbanization. The goal of this study was to find the correlation between optimal location of an eco-district from the functional center of the Tricity metropolitan area, allowing for the most favorable energy and environmental parameters related both to the architectural and urban scale. The research was conducted in four different scenarios, concerning present and future development. In these scenarios, specific locations were examined, and the following were compared: total energy consumption, ecological footprint and CO₂ lifecycle emissions. This study shows the possibility for suburban housing complexes with appropriate parameters in an edge city model to have the same or better results than complexes situated closer to the functional center of the city. This is mainly due to the building’s energy efficiency, sustainable mobility, municipal infrastructure and relevant service access. The research proves the importance of implementing sustainable energy-saving and environmentally oriented activities at both an architectural and urban scale planning process.

Forecasted climate changes and their influence on cities and regions in 2050 in terms of extreme hydrological events

The consumption of energy for lighting in buildings depends very much on the way people interact with the build environment. In this study the following building types were studied, office, school, university, commercial and industry buildings. For each building type typical user groups were identified. Then, Personas have been created for each group. As opposed to describing users with numbers and statistics, a single Persona reflects a group and is presented with a narrative. The Persona has a name, a family and living conditions that are representative for the group, also her/his values and interests are not uncommon. The Personas “typical day” includes a time schedule typical for the group. Visual conditions are common for the group, but some specific challenges connected to the visual conditions that may occur in the group are also mentioned.

Kształtowanie przestrzennej efektywności energetycznej w zespołach zabudowy mieszkaniowej