Application of climatic guidelines to urban planning: The example of Lisbon (Portugal)

In order to contribute to the sustainability of the urban environment, knowledge about the urban climate should be translated into climatic guidelines for planning. However, there are hardly any studies on applied urban climatology in areas with a Mediterranean type of climate. The study presented in this paper has several aims: to identify the climatic needs in a coastal city with Mediterranean climate; to describe the methodology, which can be adapted in order to be used in other cities; to discuss some of the problems that arise when applying climatic knowledge to urban planning, including the selection of the adequate scale of analysis, the required data and tools, the selection of the planning priorities, and the need to develop a shared language among planners and climatologists; and last to contribute to furthering the debate on the advantages of including climatic guidelines in Master Plans of urban municipalities in a systematic way. Lisbon's case study is presented. As planners need spatialized guidelines, the mapping of Lisbon's physical features was carried out using a Geographical Information System. Based on a Digital Terrain Model and on data of urban roughness a “ventilation map” was produced. A “building-density” map was also prepared based on the analysis of a Landsat image and field work. By crosstabulating these two layers, a final map depicting Lisbon's “homogeneous climatic-response units” was prepared. Finally, a series of climatic guidelines for planning were put forth for the different units.