Sustainable Cities and Society 35 (2017) 145–156 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Sustainable Cities and Society journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scs Morphological and climate balance: Proposal for a method to analyze MARK neighborhood urban forms by way of densification ⁎ Martina Pacificia, , Karin Regina de Castro Marinsa, Vinicius de Mello Cattoa, Fabrizio Ramab, Quentin Lamoura a School of Engineering of the University of São Paulo, Department of Construction Engineering, Prof. Almeida Prado Avenue, Alley 02, No. 83, 05508070, São Paulo, SP, Brazil b School of Engineering of the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Department of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering, Campus Reitor João David Ferreira Lima, s/n, Trindade, 88040-900, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: The major cities in the world have adopted certain strategies for people densification to optimize transport costs, Urban morphology to multiply exchanges of goods, to maximize social networking, as well as to promote economic growth. The Urban climate implementation of such compact cities has profoundly affected the livability of public spaces and the comfort of Assessment method pedestrians so far. In order to assess the environmental sustainability of this process, a method of analysis is Compact cities proposed and applied at a local scale. Combining a morphological and climate site assessment, the method is Built and open spaces addressed to urban areas affected by a process of built densification or relevant changes. A case study was Neighborhood scale performed in São Paulo, in an urban area of 100 ha. Inside this domain, different climatic and morphological environments were selected to perform a more detailed comparative analysis of the samples chosen. Climate variability was observed in various points of the domain, despite their very close distances. Three climate zones were identified and morphologically described. The results showed an effective correlation between the spatial arrangement of urban cross-sections and the related climate conditions at the neighborhood level; as a con- sequence, they could contribute to facing the issue of Compact City Design, improving its environmental per- formance. 1. Introduction microclimate benefits, disappear from the modern fabric, replaced by a monotone design that disregards the original environmental context. Cities are hybrid spaces, in which the natural environment blends Along this process, the “dichotomy of human and natural systems” with the built form produced by man. The complex interaction of these increases (Barau, Maconachie, Ludin, & Abdulhamid, 2014) and the two components discerns an urban settlement from another, providing urban development is transformed “in an accumulation of disconnected a new form of “anthropic diversity”. The way in which built spaces are and fragmented regions” in which mega-objects remain “detached from organized and fit into the original geographical context is critical. any urban fluidity” (Suau, Bugarič, & Fikfak, 2015). According to According to Soleymanpour, Parsaee, and Banaei (2015), people’s Harvey (2005), capital accumulation permanently transforms the an- comfort and satisfaction depend on the accommodation of built pro- thropic and natural environment, resulting in morphological changes, ducts within the local microclimate; a significant distance divides the causing continuous expansion of the traditional historic centers and modern and the traditional city; while the first one increasingly worsens creating the emergence of “new spatial structures” (Harvey, 2005). the climate context, the second one was able to enrich it. Examples of urban spatial structures, currently emerging in some The industrial revolution is a significant step that universally brands cities throughout the world, have resulted from the implementation of the transition from small urban centers to great modern cities (Marx, Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) strategies, that intend to “reduce 1967 apud Harvey, 2005). Since then, new patterns of urban growth automobile use and promote the use of public transit and human- have emerged; they diverge from the historical urban fabric and modify powered transportation modes through high density, mixed use, en- the spatial proportionality between built forms. Consequently, the an- vironmentally-friendly development within areas of walking distance cient spatial arrangements, resilient and capable of favoring good from transit centers” (Sung & Oh, 2011). Many American and European ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: martinapacifi[email protected] (M. Pacifici), [email protected] (K.R.d.C. Marins), [email protected] (V.d.M. Catto), [email protected] (F. Rama), [email protected] (Q. Lamour). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2017.07.023 Received 22 August 2016; Received in revised form 26 June 2017; Accepted 30 July 2017 Available online 05 August 2017 2210-6707/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. fi M. Paci ci et al. Sustainable Cities and Society 35 (2017) 145–156 cities have incorporated TOD concepts in their planning by inducing neighborhood quality of life, as well as compromising their potential of high-density development along the transportation lines (UN-Habitat energy conversion. Conversely, Emmanuel, Rosenlund, and Johansson Core Team, 2016). Besides the benefits described above, the strategy (2000) promotes the public space shading, by advancing the concept of has controversial purposes; if on the one hand, TOD aims to content the “shadow umbrella” for tropical climates. For Brandão (2004), this ap- human and urban form dispersion, on the other hand, it creates a proach prevents taking advantage of the water heating and energy permanent infrastructure which increases the exchange points at the conversion. A proposal for guaranteeing a minimum solar access was service of a production system, thus supporting a geographical urban developed by Duarte, Brandão, and Prata (2004) to promote the setback expansion. This type of urban planning induces a morphological fabric regulation for the Brazilian municipal building code. transformation around the new transport axes. The resulting spatial The insertion of densification and verticalization strategies in the structure shares common features characterized by: (α) People Densifi- city is not a painless operation. The co-occurrence of new urban models cation, (ß) Land Use Change, (γ) Built Compactness, (δ) Verticalization, (ε) and the existing neighborhood generates a new specific urban mix. Closed Accessing, (ζ) Urban Form Homologation. Conversely, macro-planning actions, aiming to densify extensive por- The first feature, People Densification, consists in gathering people in tions of well-infrastructure-supplied urban land, are implemented be- order to prevent scattered urban settlements; the second, Land Use fore considering the specificities of each territory. In the São Paulo city Change, allows constraining the constructed density around transit, by Master Plan, for example, the development of Neighborhood Plans is applying an appropriate policy (Suzuki, Cervero, & Iuchi, 2013); the subordinated to the densification along transport corridors (TOD). third, Built Compactness, encourages the maximum exploitation of the These plans foresees integrating the local road system within the mo- land value; the fourth, Verticalization, favors a high-plot-ratio with low- bility network, to promote social interaction by improving the quality site-coverage (Zhu, 2012); the fifth, Closed Accessing, prevents the lot of public spaces and green areas, as well as to value the cultural and access at the ground level, delegating their security to hired security environmental heritage (São Paulo Municipal Law, N° 16.050, of July force (Newman, 1996); the last one, Urban Form Homologation, encloses 31, 2014). They aim to strengthen the Municipal planning system at the the high diversity of traditional urban forms into a low-diversity, sim- neighborhood scale. plified, and increasingly anthropogenic urban landscape (Salvati, Based on these contingencies, this paper aims to investigate the Smiraglia, Bajocco, & Munafò, 2014). current morphological changes that affect contemporary Metropolises. The six phenomena described above, mixed among them, result in A method of climate and morphological analysis at local scale was new dense spatial structures, besides built and unbuilt spaces propor- conceived. In order to accomplish the method proposed, a São Paulo tions that produce various climate effects. First of all, the increase of neighborhood was selected as a case study; within the spatial ar- physical obstructions restricts the longwave radiative heat loss and rangement of urban cross-sections, a field collection of environmental enhances the rise of anthropogenic processes. These facts favor the and morphological data is performed to calculate the proposed in- release of excess heat in the air; the urban temperature rises and be- dicators. The climate variables, propitiated by such spatial arrange- comes higher than the countryside surroundings, resulting in the Urban ments, are considered key data for assessing the quality of spatial Heat Island Effect (Unger, 2004). Simultaneously, by increasing the plot structures that the metropolitan cities progressively formalize. They ratio and the land coverage, the daylight availability on building facade could be used to evaluate the environmental sustainability of urban and the openness of sky view at the ground level