Impact of Urban Cool Island measures on outdoor climate and pedestrian comfort: Simulations for a new district of Toulouse, France

One of the first airmail services in the world, the Aeropostale, was located at the Montaudran airport of Toulouse, France. This landmark and its surroundings will be refurbished in the years to come and will be transformed into a mixed-use development, the Aerospace Campus, with residential buildings, and commercial, sports, educational and cultural facilities. This new district has been planned mostly on the basis of heritage and functional rules. The UCI project (from “Urban Cool Islands”) is a French national research project that discusses procedures aiming at incorporating a set of reasoned measures for local climate adaptation into this new urban area that will be set as a landmark development. This research aims to analyse and compare various suitable, resilient urban design strategies to provide support for their application in the Montaudran district, focusing on mitigating urban heat island effects in summer conditions. Three main methodological steps were undertaken: (1) the initial urban plan was assessed relative to a set of well-known urban morphology parameters and a microclimate analysis; (2) a set of urban design variations was established based on important microclimate adaptation measures as well as on the constraints and opportunities of the original plan; (3) the microclimate was modelled and the thermal comfort of pedestrians analysed. Results pointed out the major influence of water and green features on the mitigation of urban heat islands, notably in daytime. Besides creating an important urban cool island for pedestrians, the results showed great opportunities for supporting decision makers on specific integrated actions towards a truly sustainable neighbourhood.