Greening and Cooling Urban Areas: The Open Space System Contribution for Energy Saving and Climate Change Adaptation

Given the urgency in addressing the climate change acceleration, the international community emphasises the relevance to promote both mitigation adaptation measures to achieving climate neutrality by setting binding targets for member countries in terms of emission reductions. One of the main strategies at the local level is to increase resilience through territorial planning and measures aimed at reducing energy consumption and climate adaptation. In this regard, many studies have shown that the physical characteristics of the urban context are significant factors influencing the achievement of these goals. This paper represents a first step in a larger PRIN-funded research project ‘Definition of a handbook of guidelines for implementing climate neutrality by improving the effectiveness of ecosystem services in rural and urban areas’, aimed at defining an energy-efficient decision support tool based on urban and open space characteristics. In contrast to traditional studies that tend to address the two issues (energy and climate change) separately and at the scale of individual interventions, this research considers the two types of open spaces as a single network and adopts a holistic approach, privileging the urban and neighbourhood scale. The work has a twofold goal: (i) identifying the most significant urban characteristics and the related descriptive variables mainly affecting thermal comfort and energy consumption, by carrying out an extensive scientific literature review and the authors’ previous works and (ii) and classifying the surrounding urban context of open spaces based on the relationships among the variables explaining the urban characteristics identified as relevant to investigate the match between homogeneous characteristics and the reciprocal position of open spaces. This second goal was achieved through a cluster analysis focused on the fabric portions influenced by the cooling effect of existing and potential vegetation.