Scenario-based application of neighborhood greening methods towards mitigating urban heat environment in a world heritage site - Malacca, Malaysia

Abstract

Malacca city, located on the west coast of the central part of the Malaysian Peninsula, has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. At present, it is feared that the urban heat environmental condition will gradually worsen in the future. Employing a new design approach that modifies the surrounding heat environment by creating organically linked neighborhood green spaces, which encourage pedestrian walkability, will assist in efforts to conserve and improve the town as a sustainable heritage site. Through this research, firstly, future greening potential area were extracted based on the field survey and the results of the overlaid site appraisals which encompass microclimatic factor, visibility to the historical landscape elements and theoretical pedestrian movements by implementing computer simulation techniques. Based on the identified potential greening area, the three neighborhood greening scenarios were set: 1) based on the existing condition, 2) type of following existing conservation design guideline, and 3) type of maximized greening area with new pedestirian pathways. Then, the microclimate simulation was carried out for respective scenarios and the comparative study was made specifically from the viewpoint of where and how much each scenario could contribute to the urban heat environment mitigation through the investigation of changes of micrclimate conditions such as ambient temperature and surface temperature. From the results, we confirmed that the neighborhood greening approaches proposed through this study has been effectively functioned as a streetscape conservation-oriented urban heat environment improvement methods for historical town in a tropical region.