URBAN HEAT ISLAND FORMATION IN THE CONTEXT OF URBAN SUSTAINABILITY

Excerpt from Arch. Rey Gabitan

http://pupclass.blogspot.com/2009/01/urban-heat-island-formation-in-context.html

Introduction

A steady increase in mean global temperatures and violent weather over the previous several
decades has provided circumstantial evidence that significant changes in global climate are
underway (Stone, 1999). Numerous efforts are underway to understand the cause and to explore
the technological and management strategies to minimize the implications.

In recent years, the role of human activities in the process of global climate change has attracted a
growing level of attention within the scientific community. Perhaps more significant in the short
term, however, is the impact human settlement patterns are having on climates at the regional level.
Sustainability of human kind is often linked with global climate change but the climate change at
city or regional scale is paid little attention by the policy makers and academicians in both the
developed and the developing countries. Changing climate in the dense mega-cities around the
world is a well-documented phenomenon. Cities like Bangkok, Manila, Shanghai, Tokyo, Los
Angeles and San Francisco are becoming warmer and warmer everyday. The urban heat
environment is worsening in other mega-cities around the world regardless of the development
stages and its income level. Heat environment is neglected in most cities in terms of awareness,
mitigation policies, researches and this poses a clear threat to urban sustainability. Policy makers
and the people are less aware of the implications of worsening urban heat environment to the
society and the urban system. Contributing to the potential for detrimental ecological impacts
within cities in particular is a more regionalized process of temperature change known as the urban
heat island effect.

The Urban Heat Island Phenomenon

“Urban Heat Island” is a climatological phenomenon wherein large urbanized regions have been
shown to physically alter their climates in the form of elevated temperatures relative to rural areas
at their peripheries. Temperatures of urban areas are usually higher (about 2.5 to 6˚C) than those
of its surrounding, and this phenomenon have been reported inside dense and highly urbanized
cities around the world.
Heat island effects are severe during the summertime in cities of tropical climate zones. Although
the phenomenon had been observed in earlier times in winter time in high latitude cities, mostly
in Europe and North America, today, major world cities have been suffering from this problem.

Figure 1 shows a graph of the temperature versus the level of urbanization. Although most people
know that metropolitan areas tend to be hotter than surrounding locations, little is known about the
Urban Heat Island (UHI) Phenomenon. Yet the concept has been known for nearly 200 years. The
UHI effect was first recorded as early as 1807, when an English scientist named Luke Howard
took data in and about London, Englandwhen he noticed that the city of London got heated due to
smoke and pollution mainly from coal industries. In 1818, he noticed urbanized areas had
temperature increases of about 1.5 degrees compared to rural areas. Since the discovery, the recent
problem of urban heat island is a complex one. This problem acquires greater importance in the
tropics including the Philippines, where the nighttime rate of air movement is low.
Urban Heat Island Formation

There are many factors to consider in Heat Island Formation. Most importantly, is for a Heat Island
to materialize is for an area to become urbanized. Urbanization is considered as prosperity of a
country. In the age of modernity, the city economy symbolizes th
e powerhouse of capital accumulation. A city continues to attract entrepreneurship and investment
and the clustering of nuclear settlements into urban sprawling.

By year 2025, 80% of the world’s population will live in cities according to a 1999 United Nation’s
report. The blue line indicates the trend for the growth of cities. As cities continue to grow, urban
sprawl creates unique challenges related to land use planni
 ng, transportation, agriculture,
housing, pollution, and
development. Urban expansion
also has measurable impact on
environmental process.

Rapid urbanization and

population growth in the mega-
cities has resulted into massive
infrastructure built-up and dense
settlements. Urbanization has a
dynamic relationship with the
physical environment. As cities
and urban areas expand (called
Sprawl), thousands of hectares in
naturally vegetated surfaces are
being lost each year -- replaced
with asphalt, concrete, rooftops
and other man-made materials.
While urban growth affects the physical environment (usually negatively), urban environmental
changes also affects the qualityof life in these areas. The latter lead to biochemical,
epidemiological and psychological responses in the urban dwellers.
Urban Sprawl not only results in the loss of native habitats (where animal and plant species are
becoming extinct or endangered), but creates Urban Heat Islands -- where man-made materials
such as asphalt store much of the sun's energy producing a dome of elevated air temperatures over
the urban area. In urban areas, buildings and paved surfaces have gradually replaced preexisting
natural landscapes. As a result, solar energy is absorbed into roads and rooftops, causing the
surface temperature of urban structures to become 50-70˚F higher than the ambient temperatures.
As surfaces throughout an entire community or city become hotter, overall ambient air temperature
increases. This phenomenon can raise air temperature in a city by 2-8˚F (World Meteorological
Organization, 1984).

Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd and colleagues at NASA's GoddardSpace Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.,
found that urban areas with high concentrations of buildings, roads and other artificial surfaces
retain heat and lead to warmer surrounding temperatures, and create urban heat islands. This occurs
because in urban areas, there are fewer trees, and other natural vegetation to shade buildings, block
solar radiation and cool the air. In addition, roof and paving materials absorb more of the sun’s
rays, causing both surface temperature and over-all ambient air temperature in an urban area to
rise. This increased heat may promote rising air and alter the weather around cities.
Man-made changes to the urban environment have been the traditional sources of the worsening
urban heat environment. In the process of urbanization, vegetated land surfaces are converted into
concrete and asphalt. These changes in the nature of surface have primarily affected solar
reflectivity (popularly called albedo), evaporative efficiency and roughness of the land surfaces.
Building density and type, amount of road surface, and energy use, as well as local topography
and regional wind patterns, all work together to modify a city’s climate. These causes can be
classified according to the following - alterations to urban thermal properties, changes in
vegetation cover, heat trapping by urban geometry and man-made (anthropogenic) heat input.

Alterations to urban thermal properties

Today’s urbanized cities comprise asphalt roads, concrete pavements, parking lots, buildings and
these absorb, store and radiate more heat than the vegetated surfaces. This disrupts the natural
radiation balance of the surface resulting into the warmer city. The urban heat island effect is often
noticed at night when buildings and other constructed surfaces radiate the heat they have
accumulated during
the day.

The most influential property in

the formation of urban heat island
is that of albedo. Albedo is
defined as the ration between the
light reflected from a surface and
the total light falling upon a
surface. As the picture shows,
albedo can range greatly. Clearly,
the albedo of vegetation is much
greater than that of civil
structures, resulting in structures
absorbing much more solar
radiation than trees and plants.

Changes in vegetation cover

Heat islands are created when city growth alters the urban fabric by substituting man-made asphalt
roads and tar roofs and other features for forest growth. Apart from radiation balance, vegetation
loss is responsible for decreasing evapotranspiration process in which plant uses heat from the air
to evaporate water in the leaf transpiration process. The process releases moisture into the
atmosphere. This process is similar to sweating in humans, effectively releasing heat into the
atmosphere. As the water evaporates from vegetation, heat is taken out of the environment. In that
way vegetation act as heat sink. They are also responsible for retaining water into the soil and their
absence decrease the ability of the soil to retain water thereby decreasing the evaporation rate.
Therefore worsening heat environment is partly responsible for the decreased humidity in mega-
cities too. Studies in Tokyo have revealed that the temperature has gone up by 2˚C on average and
its humidity has fallen by fifteen percent in the last one hundred year.
Heat trapping by urban geometry

Another important reason for worsening of heat environment is the change in the wind pattern.
Urban infrastructures increase surface roughness and they lower wind speeds which could have
carried away surface heat gain. The formation of urban canopy changes the wind pattern and does
not allow wind to enter or to swipe away from the near ground surface effectively, trapping heat
inside the canopy
The canyon structure that tall buildings create enhances warming. During the day, solar energy is
trapped by multiple reflections off the buildings while the infrared heat losses are reduced by
absorption. The city also changes the overall cooling action of the wind by channeling it into
narrow streets. The geometry of high vertical walls and narrow streets also increases the summer
heat cities as the high sun is reflected downward and is absorbed, and then reradiated, by the often
rocklike street and building surfaces.
Man-made (anthropogenic) heat input
In order for cities to thrive, energy production is a necessity. Great amount of heat is released into
the environment by powerplants. Transportation is also contributes large amounts of heat, which
is evident to those stuck in rush hour traffic. Clearly, everyday human activity required for a
functional society only aggravates the heat island problem. The biggest contributions are from
areas of high industrialization, airports and seaports. These areas have enormous energy
expenditures, and are highly unlikely to contain vegetation.
Mega-cities are characterized by high population density, high per capita energy consumption and
their demand for energy is fulfilled in the physical forms such as electricity, oil, gases and coals
which are ultimately discharged as heat into the urban atmosphere. Direct heat discharges are
usually categorized as stationary and mobile. Heat discharge from buildings by air conditioning
units is the single major source of stationary heat discharge. Although many industrial plants and
industries are located far from the cities, still some of them are located in the cities which release
heat directly into the urban environment. However they usually discharge heat from tall chimney
stacks that are usually easy to swipe away by the wind breeze. Automobiles discharge large amount
of heat that is mobile in nature. In the city centers and high traffic zones, the concentration of this
discharged heat further increases by congestion and presence of fuel inefficient vehicles. A closer
look into a mid-size vehicle for urban driving cycle suggests that nearly thirteen percent of total
input energy is converted into the useful work while the rest dissipates as heat.
The cumulative effects of all these factors cause urban environment to be hotter than the
surrounding areas. Similar to the effects of global warming, such “urban warming” can have
substantial implications for air quality and human health within affected regions Increasing at a
rate of 0.25 to 2˚F (0.1 to 1.1˚C) per decade, the heat island effect within the urban cores of rapidly
growing metropolitan regions may double within 50 years (McPherson, 1994). In light of the
roughly 2.9 billion new residents to arrive in urban regions between 1990 and 2025, there is a
pressing need to ascertain the implications of urban warming for metropolitan regions and to
identify potential strategies to counteract regional climate change.
Implications of Urban Heat Island Formation

Typical urban surfaces, such as concrete and asphalt, get much hotter than vegetated surfaces
during the day. They store the energy and release it at night, thus creating a dome of warmer air
over the city. Hypothesized to result, in part, from the elevated heat capacity and waterproofing
effect of urban construction materials, the urban heat island effect is believed to promote ozone
formation, increase energy consumption, and exacerbate human and environmental heat stress
(Cardelino and Chameides 1990). The increased heat of our cities increases discomfort for
everyone, requires an increase in the amount of energy used for cooling purposes, and increases
pollution. However, the exact nature of implications depends upon geographical and local climate
situation. The major unwanted implications of urban heat island are thermal discomfort, increased
cooling demand and air pollution.

Urbanization has a tremendous impact on air quality, both over the city and the surrounding
countryside. Air quality attainment becomes a critical problem and is exacerbated by urban growth.
We know that usually warm air rises above and leads to the development of a low-pressure area
and cold air gushes in. but in cases of urban heat island, the warm air gets trapped in by the weight
of the pollutants, which affects the air quality and makes the air heavier to rise.

Urban heat islands and air pollution are closely related in an urban system. Besides discomfort,
urban heat islands also heavily contribute to an increase in smog production -- a serious
environmental air quality health problem which especially affects breathing for children and
seniors. The additional temperature acts as catalyst to enhance photochemical reaction, which
increases the particles in the air, and thus contributes to the formation of smog and clouds. The
presence of ozone creates smog and is the major environmental problem in many cities around the
world. Smog is formed when air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NOx) and Volatile Organic
Compunds (VOCs) -- mainly coming from cars and power plants -- combine with high outside
temperatures, usually during hot summer months. Researchers have co-related that smog event
increase by ten percent for each increase of 5˚F in temperature (EPA, 1992). Simply stated, smog
formation is directly related to air temperatures -- the higher the air temperature -- the more smog
that will be produced. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, a drop in air temperature of
just a couple of degrees in urban areas can reduce levels of smog on the order to 5 percent to 10
percent, sometimes up to 20 percent -- by slowing down the cooking rate of smog.

Apart from ozone, some bio-genic hydrocarbons from emissions of automobiles are also expected
to increase due to increased temperatures. A significant amount of SOx, NOx, and CO emissions
take place from the evaporative losses during tank filling and transportation of petroleum products
in the mega-cities.

The UHI effect prolongs and intensifies heat waves in cities, making residents and workers
uncomfortable and putting them at increased risk for heat exhaustion and heat stroke. In addition,
high concentrations of ground level ozone aggravate respiratory problems such as asthma, putting
children and the elderly at particular risk. During periods of extreme heat, even trained athletes
have been known to die from heat stroke and/or exhaustion. The extreme temperatures caused by
UHIs will undoubtedly place a burden on the country’s healthcare system.

In terms of economic and infrastructure costs, additional cooling energy demand of electricity in
commercial and residential buildings during summer is expected to be tremendous. Increased
demand for energy can cost consumers and cities thousands of additional money in air-
conditioning bills in order to maintain comfort levels. In the city of Los Angeles alone, estimates
of up to 100 million dollars are spent on energy each year. The air-conditioning equipments
discharge heat (which is derived from electricity produced elsewhere) in the urban atmosphere
which ultimately contribute to the raising urban temperature. Further, the air-conditioning demand
and outside temperature are very closely related thus requiring additional cooling load. This
additional cooling load is again provided by electricity, a large portion of which is wasted as heat
to urban atmosphere. Studies have shown that for each degree Fahrenheit the daily average
temperature increases, electric power demand increases by nearly two percent (Akbari).

Beyond posing a threat to human health and raising air conditioning costs, the heat island effect
can also cause physiological stress in other animals, change the mix of plants and animals that live
in the area, and even lead to changes in the distribution of pathogens.

Moreover, added heat in cities can destabilize and change the way air circulates around cities.
Rising warm air may help produce clouds that result in more rainfall around urban areas. Mostly
during the warmer months, the added heat creates wind circulations and rising air that can produce
clouds or enhance existing ones. Under the right conditions, these clouds can evolve into rain-
producers or storms.

Modification of the landscape through urbanization alters the natural channeling of energy through
the atmospheric, land and water systems. Although large-scale atmospheric and climatic
phenomena are global in scope, urban areas cannot be viewed in isolation because the local
environment modifies the conditions in the thin air stratum above the ground, generally referred
to as the atmospheric boundary layer. As humans alter the natural landscape in the city-building
process, the local energy exchanges that take place within the boundary layer are affected.
Therefore, modification of the landscape influences the local (microscale), mesoscale, and even
the macroscale climate.

Implications in Metro Manila

The worsening heat environment in the mega-cities has created a clear threat to the urban
sustainability which is shaded by a surge of international interest in the global warming. The
implications mentioned earlier clearly show the importance of improving urban heat environment
and their role in ascertaining urban sustainability.
In the past several decades, there has been a worldwide shift from rural to urban areas. In Asia, it
was estimated that by the year 2000, the urban population will have grown to 35% of the total
population compared to only 21% in 1975. Metropolitan Manila, considered as the 18th largest
metropolitan area in the world in 2002, is predicted to reach 25 million by near 2015. The
metropolitan region would have to accommodate an increment of 11 million people, 3.5 million
in Metro Manila and 7.5 million in the adjoining municipalities. Consequently, Metro Manila will
be facing further inflow of populations while the adjoining areas will be facing severe shortage on
social infrastructure to cope with the impact of rapid suburbanization.

The rapid growth of Metro Manila poised a tremendous impact on its ecosystem. Its rapid
urbanization resulted to congestion and intensification of development activities which:
(1) placed serious strains on supporting structures and rendered existing services inadequate;
(2) resulted to incompatible and conflicting land uses;
(3) encouraged growth on the urban area’s peripheries where basic infrastructure services are not
available; and
(4) spoiled the quality of the urban environment

With respect to atmospheric environment, the air quality has deteriorated to a point where people
are wondering whether the time has come to wear gas masks. Air quality monitoring stations in
eleven strategic locations in Metro Manila showed that the concentration levels of suspended
particulate matters, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide are in the up trend. In areas near major
thoroughfares, concentration of these three pollutants has already exceeded the levels considered
safe by the World Health Organization authorities. Air quality measurements indicate that
particulate matter is the overwhelming pollutant of concern followed by lead. Carbon monoxide
and nitrogen dioxide levels occasionally exceed accepted standards but particulate mater
concentrations consistently exceed the acceptable limits. Emission inventory showed that 70
percent of air pollutants in Metro Manila are attributable to mobile sources (motor vehicles) and
30 percent to stationary sources (industries and power plants).

Due to the presence of high-rise buildings and the concentration of housing and other
infrastructures, a phenomenon known as heat island effect is discernible in Metro Manila (See
satellite image). This problem is aggravated by the emission of carbon dioxide, a by-product of
fossil fuel combustion by both stationary and mobile sources. The presence of carbon dioxide will
produce the so called green house effect which is synergistic with the heat island effect causing
the ambient temperatures in the area to rise several degrees warmer than the countryside.
Measurement of Heat Island

Several techniques are applied to measure heat islands. The importance of these techniques
depends upon the nature of requirements. Micro-scale heat island measurements are done by the
temperature sensors and some instrumentation which are fairly accurate and well-established.
However, in the viewpoint of large-scale measurements such as a mega-city, these are not useful.
Site observation with the help of sensors in a mobile source such as a car is one of the important
tools to measure heat island effect but is labor intensive and the result difficult to validate due to
varying weather conditions each time the observation is done.

Recently, remote sensing technology with the help of satellite images is commonly being used to
get information on heat islands. Remote sensing techniques can be used to obtain the thermal
images of the place in concern and provide information on land use. Loss of green surfaces,
information on surface reflectivity of solar radiation and buildings can be obtained with the help
of satellite images. The comparison between past and present date can show the trend of heat island
along with land use information which are very important in identifying the degree of severity of
heat island phenomenon in a particular place.

There are inherent problems though of remote sensing technology in the planning process. It can
provide thermal images but there is difficulty in segregating the types of thermal sources such as
from mobile sources or stationary sources. It provides snapshot of situation without any knowledge
of the mechanisms that is going on in the urban system. The land use, building and transportation
information could be obtained from remote sensing techniques but it is not possible to see their
contribution and sensitiveness on the heat island phenomenon.

The information obtained from remote sensing need to be coupled with numerical climatic models
in order to analyze the effect of various planning alternatives of land use and heat discharge to
improve the urban heat environment. These models are able to study the physical climatic
phenomenon in the urban system. In this sense, remote sensing data along with Geographic
Information System (GIS) is a powerful tool in providing information to the numerical models
which can study, simulate various planning alternatives and can predict the implications on heat
environment. Numerical models are the powerful tools to understand the mechanisms of heat
island. These models can be validated with site data measurements or from remote sensing
techniques.

The following image is an aerial thermal image of a mall and surroundings located
in Huntsville, Alabama. The image, courtesy of NASA, was taken approximately five hours after
sunset. The dark shades correspond to cooler temperatures. The mall parking lot (lower left
quadrant of the photo) has a temperature of 24.0 degrees Celsius, while a forest, located in the
upper right quadrant has a temperature of 17.1 degrees Celsius.
 Although satellite data are very
useful for analysis of the urban
heat island effect at a coarse level,
they do not lend themselves to
developing a better
understanding of which surfaces
across the city contribute to or
drive the development of the
urban heat island effect. Analysis
of thermal energy responses for
specific or discrete surfaces
typical of the urban landscape
(e.g. asphalt, building rooftops,
vegetation) requires
measurements at a very fine
spatial scale (i.e., <15m)>
The explosion of new knowledge
on the theoretical aspects of
urban climate change is not well
matched by practical
applications. In particular, urban
designers and planners are yet to utilize the current knowledge to develop architectural and urban
design strategies for the mitigation of the negative effects of urban heat island. This is in part due
to some weaknesses in current methods. For example, some of the problems associated with
remote sensing techniques hinder the detection of air temperature heat island that directly affects
human comfort as opposed to surface temperature heat island. These problems include, difficulties
in "seeing" the vertical active surfaces, the not so well defined coupling of surface and air
temperatures in urban areas and inhomogeniety of urban surfaces leading to a patch work of
emissivity and albedo. The problem with urban-rural difference method in general is that it
assumes weather over time remains constant. Furthermore, the intra-urban differences are ignored.
It is pointed out that it is the intra-urban climatic difference that is of value for urban planners and
designers interested in mitigating the negative effects of UHIs. In other methods, it is assumed that
rural climate is somehow "natural" to the area. However, in the context of rapid global
urbanization, there are very few rural areas remaining with their "natural" climates intact.
Heat Island Mitigation Strategies: The Role of Urban Planning

Till today, urban developers and policy makers are not serious on the implications of the worsening
heat environment. The costs as discussed above, are tremendous which would force this effect to
be taken seriously into up-coming days. On one hand, there are certain things that might be difficult
to change such as urban thermal mass, weather patterns and surface roughness. Elimination of
these effects would require complete and drastic new way of thinking in the way cities are built
and operate. But on the other hand, there are plenty of corrective measures that can be taken within
the existing urban set-up such as increasing vegetation cover, albedo modification, efficient energy
consumption and management of heat discharge sources which are possible by supportive urban
planning and policy measures.
Increasing vegetative cover
Tree plantation is the most obvious and the easiest way to improve heat environment in existing
urban set-ups. Trees help in a number of ways; they provide direct shade to the buildings from
solar radiation so that less radiation will reach to the building walls, windows and roof to be
absorbed. They also create shades in the soil and concrete pavements to act as heat sink for the
buildings and asphalt roads. Increase in water vapor due to evapotranspiration by plant leaves is
significant in taking the heat away. Trees also act as pollutants, carbon and noise sink. It helps to
mitigate greenhouse effects by consuming carbon dioxide in the photosynthesis process. It is
estimated that a street lined with trees can reduce dust particles of about 7,000 particles per liter of
air. However, care must be used in choosing the type of trees since some trees give off organic
compounds (hydrocarbons) into the atmosphere and contribute to ozone in forming smog.

Planting programs can help reduce urban temperatures and make cities greener. Within ten to
fifteen years – the time it takes a tree to grow to a useful size – trees placed in strategic locations
can reduce heating and cooling costs by an average of 10-20%. Over their lifetimes, trees can be
much less expensive than air conditioners and the energy needed to run them.
Well-distributed green parks and water bodies around the urban city act as recreational and
aesthetic beauty. Urban planners are concerned with parks and water bodies but their motivation
is for aesthetic beauty rather than betterment of heat environment. In the existing urban set-up,
metropolitan authorities could encourage green belts around the roadside and plantations. This
strategy depend on the local climate condition whether the place of concern is hot-dry or hot-humid
in nature. In the hot-dry regions, the evaporation from the soil is minimal, urban parks and water
bodies increase water evaporation from both the plants and the soil, consequently the effect on
local climate could be significant and desirable. On the contrary, hot-humid regions have low
specific evaporation and reduction in the wind speed near the ground is undesirable from the
comfort viewpoint (Givoni, 1997).

Albedo modification
Albedo is defined as the ability of the surface to reflect solar radiation. It is different from
reflectivity in the sense that reflectivity might only account for visual bands whereas albedo
accounts for all the incoming radiation to the surface. It is basically hemispherical reflection of
radiation integrated over the solar spectrum (0.3 – 2.5 mm) and includes specular and diffuse
reflection (Bretz et al, 1998). Asphalt roads, concrete pavements and corrugated roofs have low
values of albedo which form the major part of the dense mega-cities. Low albedo surfaces absorb
significant proportion of the solar radiation and contribute in worsening urban heat environment.
The mitigation strategy therefore is to improve over-all albedo of the urban surfaces.

Improving the urban albedo, such as for buildings and other surfaces have additional advantages.
Apart from facilitating urban surfaces to reflect most of the solar radiation, it also contributes in
cooling the buildings so that air-conditioning demand is greatly reduced. Studies have shown that
the cooling energy savings from the high-albedo roofs and walls in the buildings are very
significant. Any heat island mitigation strategy would be required to identify the opportunities that
exist in improving the urban surface albedo. The surface albedo property can be greatly enhanced
either by mixing it with some third material that can greatly increase its albedo or replacing the
traditional construction material completely. The “cool construction materials” can be used to
improve solar reflectance without significant cost additions. The choice of light and white colored
surfaces is possible, however, a distinction between the light colored surface and high albedo
surface should be well understood since light colored surface only means high reflectivity in the
visible band.

The effect of albedo modification by one or combination of various methods at the scale of a city
and their implication to the overall temperature is not very much studied. In general, the motivation
for such albedo improvement has been observed from the air-conditioning viewpoint at building
scale rather than reduction of overall thermal situation at the city scale. Building owners, builders
and architects have choice to select color of the rooftops, type of construction materials and other
measures. Urban planners and policy makers can change the attitude of the stakeholders by
improving building codes with thermal considerations, energy management and appropriate urban
planning.
Efficient energy consumption and management of heat discharge sources
Since mega-cities are characterized by high energy consumption, ample opportunities exist to
manage energy and the heat discharge sources. As stated earlier, air-conditioning is the major
stationary heat discharge sources arising from buildings. Air-conditioning units discharge heat to
the urban atmosphere continuously due to the energy consumption inside the buildings in various
forms (mainly gas and electricity) and absorbed solar radiation through the building surfaces.
Three types of management is important here. First, is to enhance energy efficiencies of the end
use appliances and the way of supplying energy. Second, is the energy efficient building design
from architecture standpoint. And third, is the location of heat discharge sources. High-rise
buildings allow the flexibility of placing the air-conditioning units (or plants) at the height
significantly above the ground surfaces and the prevailing wind at the height can effectively swipe
away the heat without letting it to concentrate in the urban canopy. Although there could be
concern on the costs that would conflict with the optimization of piping, a balance optimum is
possible. A mixture of high-rise and medium rise buildings in the dense urban area also enhance
the over-all urban ventilation by creating turbulence in wind canopy, the ventilation in such case
might be better than the urban area with low density but with buildings of similar heights.

The effect of improving appliance efficiencies in buildings on urban heat environment might be
very small without changing the way the energies are supplied into the buildings. A central air-
conditioning system is energy and cost-wise more efficient than the smaller units in each rooms or
at each floors in the multi-storey structures. District cooling is favorable in the dense urban
structure. In individual detached homes, small measures such as shading of air-conditioning units
can produce effective results.

Transportation is the major heat discharge source that is mobile and difficult to simulate. It is
encouraging that the automobile fuel efficiency is improving but at the same time, concentration
of vehicles and traffic congestion is also increasing in the mega-cities and the net effect of which
is unfavorable from urban warming standpoint. An exact extent of automobile’s implication on
urban heat environment is largely unknown. However, traffic management and reduction in the
vehicle idle time in core city areas is expected to greatly relieve the heat island phenomenon.
The anthropogenic heat discharges in the big cities are significant. Major cities in the US are
reported to have summer anthropogenic heating in the range of 20-40 W/m2 in comparison to the
solar radiation of 700-1000 W/m2 for clear or partly cloudy day at noon (Taha, 1997).
In Los Angeles, the increased power costs the ratepayers about $100,000 per hour, about $100
million per year. It is estimated that about 1-1.5 gigawatts of power are used to compensate the
impact of the heat island. Reducing the energy cost would also help in reducing the air pollution
problem. By 2015, when the full implementation of reflective surfaces and vegetation comes in
full-scale, the state will save about $4 billion per year in reduced cooling energy demand.

In order to combat urban heat island, the air quality has to be improved reducing the level of toxic
gases, more trees to be planted, save energy and thus reduce pollution, and thereby save cost of
energy and money, and improve the overall livability. Air quality management systems should
include abatement and other measures to improve air quality, and to maintain air quality within a
defined range. Enacting urban planning legislation to increase the amount of vegetation could see
a reduction in temperatures. Another method is to reduce the amount of heat absorbed by civil
structures by using construction materials that have high albedo and not prone to heat absorption.
The urban metabolism concept (Wolman, 1965) indicates that environmental quality improvement
in urban areas rests on the careful use and removal of energy and matter. In the urban design sense,
environment conscious urban designers can use at least three tools for the realization of the goals
of energy efficiency, transport reduction and air quality improvement. These are thru zoning laws,
building laws, and landscape control. Some attempts at utilizing these tools for the purposes of
energy and transportation reduction have already been made (cf. Emmanuel, 1995). Although these
attempts are from the temperate climate cities, they offer possible models for hot-humid cities.

In the enhancement of the urban physical environment, quality should be the major goal of climate-
conscious design. In order to achieve the design goals of energy efficiency, transportation
reduction and air quality improvement, in the tropics, design strategies could take one of the
following forms:
Building form guidelines
Activity pattern controls
Control of relationship to natural features
Building Form
Court-yard forms
Orientation
Activity Relationships for Comfortable Moving & Transport Reduction
Shopping Streets
Gathering Places
Provisions for Evening Life (Evenings are tropics' winter).
Pedestrian Paths and Nodes
Network for Cars
Relationship to Natural Features - Landscape Controls
Relationship to Waterbodies
Collection of Rainwater
Topographical Relationships
Conclusion and Recommendations
While more definitive studies are continuing, it is clear from the data that the built environment, and
corresponding lack of vegetation, is several degrees warmer than nearby natural environments. The
increasing effects in tropical mega-cities have created increasing concern for the sustainability of the
urban system.

Studies in the urban heat environment have gone a long way. Most of the earlier researches though were
focused from the meteorological point of view. The motivation was to see the implications of heat island
on weather phenomenon. Another group of researchers tried to study heat environment from an
architectural point of view, where their intentions were to provide the ambient temperature and comfort
condition inside buildings. The former was of concern of regional scale and the latter was of building scale
but none approach it from the scale of a city. However, with the advent of remote sensing and aeronautics
research using techniques developed for space technologies, a sudden interest is observed.

Recent studies that have used these technologies have focused on the understanding of land use patterns
to heat production and its effect on the lowest layers in the atmosphere. The concern is on how the
characteristics of the urban landscape drive this urban heat island effect and how urbanization and growth
shape the dynamics of the effect. Parks and greenbelts reduce temperatures while the Central Business
district (CBD), commercial areas, and even suburban housing tracts are areas of warmer temperatures.
Every house, building, and road changes the microclimate around it, contributing to the urban heat islands
of our cities. The urban heat island effect will exist as long as urban areas exist. However, the growth of
heat islands can be slowed, and its effects reduced.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the urban heat environment, their implications to urban
sustainability, and to identify measures to alleviate it. There are many possible measures that exist to
make cities more sustainable and habitable and urban planners and policy makers should think this
phenomenon seriously before the situation gets worse further. In some affluent cities such as Tokyo, Los
Angeles and Atlanta, the problem has been identified as quite serious and major researches are being
initiated. Present and future mega-cities like Metro Manila should learn the lessons from these cities and
appropriate urban policies should be put into action.

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