In the last decades, several studies have revealed how critical the urban heat island (UHI) effect can be in cities located in cold climates, such as the Canadian one. Meanwhile, many researchers have looked at the impact of the city design over the urban microclimate, and have raised concerns about the development of too dense cities. Under the effect of the “Places to Growth” plan, the city of Toronto is experiencing one of the highest rates of building development in North America. Over 48,000 and 33,000 new home permits were issued in 2012 and 2013 respectively, and at the beginning of 2015, almost 500 high-rise proposals across the Greater Toronto Area were released. In this context, it is important to investigate how new constructions will affect the urban microclimate, and to propose strategies to mitigate possible UHI effects. Using the software ENVI-met, microclimate simulations for the Church-Yonge corridor both in the current situation and with the new constructions are reported in this paper. The outdoor air temperature and the wind speed are the parameters used to assess the outdoor microclimate changes. The results show that the new constructions could increase the wind speed around the buildings. However, high-rise buildings will somewhat reduce the air temperature during day-time, as they will create large shadow areas, with lower average mean radiant temperature.

Population decline is leading to a shrinking city size in industrialized countries. In some developing countries, because majority of the population is concentrated in big cities, the population in undeveloped cities has begun to decline. Japan experienced rapid urban expansion surrounding industrial districts, including steeply sloped areas, between the 1950s and 1970s. In the past forty years, Japan’s population has decreased, and the average age of the population is increasing. The reduction in the size of cities, following population decreases is becoming an important issue, and the study of sustainable, concentrated urban planning to cope with shrinking city size is, therefore, necessary. We have conducted a case study using Yahatahigashi-ku to determine its redevelopment potential, based on a combination of urban geographic data. This paper (1) presents a typical case study using Geographic Information System (GIS) data to evaluate an aging and shrinking society; (2) explores the GIS design approaches configured for an aging society; and (3) evaluates the optimization of environmental performance for an urban regeneration plan. The primary factors related to this urban design case study included, a declining population, mixed urban land use, and the placement of public facilities. We developed a method involving the slope degree to evaluate land-use to model the importance of informational evaluation in the urban planning process. This method could contribute to the urban regeneration for an aging society and could also be applied to other aging and shrinking cities, in mountainous regions.

Due to the rapid increase in the number of elderly people in Chinese cities, the development and planning of aged care facilities, and particularly community care facilities, which will gradually become the mainstream choice for the elderly in China, is becoming an important topic for urban sustainability. Previous studies have shown that the number and scale of aged care facilities in many cities are far from meeting the needs of the elderly and the overall occupation rate is low. Some of these cities are still expanding and some are undergoing urban renovation. In this process, the scientific planning of community care facilities to promote efficient use of facility resources has become an urgent problem that needs to be solved. In this study, the two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method and a potential model based on the Geographic Information System (GIS) were used to carry out a scientific evaluation of the spatial accessibility of community care facilities in the Beilin district of Xi’an. The aims were to explore the best quantitative research methods for assessing the distribution of Xi’an community care facilities’ spatial accessibility, provide ideas for similar studies in the future, and further the understanding of spatial allocation of urban community care facilities resources.

In the context of global climate change, urban morphology is closely related to thermal comfort and contributes to sustainable urban development. Academics started to pay attention to related topics and carried out many studies during the last decades. This paper aims to summarize the research achievements and the development track for future studies. The Web of Science database and CiteSpace were used in this paper to conduct a bibliometric analysis of 556 studies in related fields from 1993 to 2020. Using a three-level co-occurrence analysis of 446 keywords, 1187 cocited literature clusters, and 15 landmark studies, the research topics and mainstream research frameworks were identified. The results show that with the increasing participation of disciplines such as computer science, ecology, and chemistry, the purpose of future research will shift to a focus on anthropogenic heat emissions, energy consumption, air pollution, and other aspects, and new research tools will be needed. In addition to building-scale and block-scale morphology, urban-scale morphology and green infrastructure will become the focus in the future. This study provides a systematic review of research about urban morphology and thermal comfort, which can inspire other researchers and policy makers.

Rapid urban expansion leads to the continuous deterioration of the urban thermal environment, which endangers the sustainable development of the city; meanwhile, countries all over the world are becoming increasingly interested in the mitigating effects of urban green spaces on heat islands. In this context, many studies show that pocket parks play an important role in optimizing the thermal environment of urban blocks, especially with the high-intensity development of urban blocks. Moreover, many cities in China have become mature, and it is difficult to open up large green areas. Therefore, to improve the urban thermal environment in summer, it is necessary to adapt to an efficient pocket-park design strategy in blocks. To consider the impact of block development intensity on the design strategy of pocket parks, three pocket parks in blocks with different floor-area ratios in the central area of Xi’an were selected as examples. This research compares the effects of tree density and green-space layout on the thermal environment in different floor-area ratio districts on a summer day using environmental simulation (ENVI-met). The results show that the design strategies of pocket parks in urban blocks with different development intensities are different. High tree density performs better from the perspective of improving the urban thermal environment. For the low and medium development intensity blocks, the effects of the open green space and closed green space are similar, while the open green space layout can significantly improve thermal comfort in high-intensity development blocks.