What is it about?
The paper tells the fascinating story behind today's attempts to apply urban climate science in town planning. The narrative begins in prewar Germany where the distinctive climate patterns of towns and cities were first recognized, and shows how postwar municipalities discovered how they might shape their micro-climates. In the 1960s this field of applied science was systematized, taught and disseminated via commissions and study groups of the World Meteorological Organization, the International Federation of Housing and Planning, the Confédération Internationale du Bâtiment and the International Society for Biometeorology. We describe the organizations and individuals involved in this forgotten campaign, and assess the reasons for its limited impact and slim legacy.
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Why is it important?
Urgent climate challenges face cities today. So we do well to study and learn from past experiences, successful or not, in the application of urban climate science.
Perspectives
This paper was one of several arising from the University of Manchester's top-rated ESRC project 'Climate Science and Urban Design'
Professor Michael Hebbert
University College London
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Urban Climatology Applied to Urban Planning: A Postwar Knowledge Circulation Failure, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, June 2013, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12046.
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