Urban green space's cooling effects in terraced housing area microclimates in Johor Bahru, Malaysia

Abstract

Malaysia is a tropical country with warm-humid equatorial climate that have air temperature averages between 22°C to 32°C. The growth of urban diminishes the green spaces and fragments the spatial thus degradation of the environment happened. Urban green spaces are capable to mitigate urban heat island by certain degree. Thus, the measurable influence of green spaces is hard to quantify. The amount of green space and its layout exerts on the microclimate. Green spaces will affect radiant cooling, ventilation and evaporative cooling whereby when the size and distribution of green space is different. So this paper aims to quantify the cooling effects of urban green spaces in residential area in tropical region in term of green spaces areas layout, coverage ratio and cooling intensity. ENVI-Met was used as a tool to manipulate climatological data in a residential area with a park. Through this result, the relationship of temperature, humidity and wind speed with urban green spaces will be predicted and analyzed and discussed. As the result of the analysis, urban green spaces are important to mitigate urban heat island by 3.8°C to 6.4 °C. Therefore it is necessary to investigate different types of urban green spaces and distribution in future.