Climate-Responsive Designs to Enhance Outdoor Thermal Comfort in Urban Residential Areas

Our study aims to determine relationships among microclimate, outdoor thermal perception, and residents’ behavior in a residential area in Xi’an, China. Four typical open spaces in the residential area were investigated using meteorological measurements, questionnaire survey, and behavioral records to determine how individuals’ thermal comfort relates to their outdoor activities. Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) was applied to quantitatively determine the outdoor thermal benchmarks in Xi’an, and climate-responsive strategies for open spaces were proposed based on thermal benchmarks. Results showed that: (1) spaces differed significantly in air temperature, wind speed, solar radiation, globe temperature, mean radiative temperature, and PET, but not relatively humidity, (2) in summer, residents preferred activities in shaded environments and attendance was inversely linearly related to PET, and (3) optimum design strategies for open spaces were proposed to consider shelterbelts, shaded facilities, plants, water, and underlying surfaces. These results will help urban designers improve their understanding of the relationship between behavior and thermal comfort and provide design advice for open spaces in residential areas in China’s cold region.