Evidence-based neighborhood greening and concomitant improvement of urban heat environment in the context of a world heritage site - Malacca, Malaysia

Abstract

Malacca, located on the west coast of the central part of the Malaysian Peninsula, has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. At present, the urban heat environmental condition is feared to gradually worsen in the future. By applying a new design that modifies the heat environment by creating organically linked neighborhood green spaces, which encourage pedestrian use, will assist in efforts to conserve and improve the town as a sustainable heritage site. In this research, areas with future greening potential are first extracted based on field surveys and the results of overlaid site appraisals that, by using computer simulations, account for pedestrian thermal comfort, visibility of the historical landscape, and movement. Based on the identified and extracted areas with greening potential, three neighborhood greening scenarios are established: case 1 is based on the existing conditions, case 2 is based on following existing conservation plans, and case 3 is based on maximizing green areas by implementing the proposed pedestrian walkway. A microclimate simulation was done for each scenario and the results are compared specifically from the viewpoint of where and how much each scenario contributes to mitigating the urban heat environment, focusing on changes in physiologically equivalent temperature distribution and numerical changes. From the results, we conclude that the streetscape conservation oriented neighborhood greening approaches proposed herein should improve the urban heat environment in such historical towns in tropical regions.