Progress on green infrastructure for urban cooling: Evaluating techniques, design strategies, and benefits

Green infrastructure (GI) can act as an effective cooling strategy to mitigate the urban heat island effect. The complex interdependencies in the built environment make it challenging to quantify GI cooling accurately. Present literature on GI cooling often lacks focus on techniques and overlooks cooling co-benefits. This review addresses this gap by consolidating recent research on standard GI techniques and design approaches to maximize GI cooling. The temperature results from recent literature are segregated by GI type, technique type, local climate zones, and scale. ENVI-met and the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) are the most common numerical modeling methods utilized for the microscale and mesoscale. Results indicate that the highest air temperature reduction is achieved by arid climates, followed by temperate, tropical, and continental climates, respectively. The study suggests that to integrate GI into the built environment successfully, researchers should consider influencing factors like spatial distribution, microclimate, and plant selection. Climate change intensifies the severity of overheating; therefore, integrating GI into cities must be done holistically and consider co-benefits and related trade-offs.