Won, Jongho, and Meen Chel Jung. 2023. Does Compact Development Mitigate Urban Thermal Environments? Influences of Smart Growth Principles on Land Surface Temperatures in Los Angeles and Portland. Sustainable Cities and Society 90.
Abstract
The smart growth paradigm has emerged as a major planning framework to respond to the adverse outcomes of reckless development, but its influences on urban thermal environments are underexplored in the scholarly literature. Since elevated land surface temperature (LST) is closely related to the physical expansion of developed areas, it is necessary to identify the effects of smart growth strategies on LST. This study, therefore, investigated the relationships between LST, landscape variables, and smart growth variables at the census block group level in two distinct urban locales: the City of Los Angeles, California, and the City of Portland, Oregon, from 2010 to 2018. Through multivariate analyses—including the principal component analysis (PCA), K-means clustering, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), and regression models—this study revealed the potential of urban forms promoted by the smart growth principles comprehensively to mitigate LST. Given the different features of built environments and planning systems between the two cities, the results of this study also indicate the necessity of considering local contexts rather than suggesting a “one-size-fits-all” policy.
Keywords
Smart growth; Compact development; Land surface temperature; Urban form; Landscape