Cool Cities: Towards Sustainable and Healthy Urban Environments (2nd Edition)

Dear Colleagues,

Urban overheating due to heat waves and urban heat island (UHI) effects associated with climate change and urbanization has various adverse effects on (I) urban dwellers (e.g., increased heat stress, heat-related illnesses and mortality); (II) the urban building stock (e.g., increased space cooling energy consumption during the summertime); (III) the overall urban climate (e.g., synergies with atmospheric pollution in urban areas); and (IV) urban economic growth (e.g., reduced work productivity, increased healthcare and associated economic losses). The ongoing urbanization seen in many parts of the world is likely to further exacerbate the aforementioned effects of urban overheating, further deteriorating the quality of life in urban areas. Moreover, urban overheating is relevant to the specific characteristics (e.g., topography, synoptic and mesoscale circulations, land use patterns) of a given locality, making the “one size fits all” approach to tackling heat issues nearly impossible. Consequently, comprehensive and interdisciplinary research attempting to understand urban heat challenges, which are somewhat complex and multi-faceted, is essential for designing sustainable and salutogenic cities. This Special Issue is a follow-up of the first Special Issue entitled “Cool Cities: Towards Sustainable and Healthy Urban Environments” (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/atmosphere/special_issues/cool_cities) published in Atmosphere in 2022. To that end, for this Special Issue we invite papers on the following themes:

• Assessment of urban heat and its evolution;
• Advanced scientific modelling of urban heat;
• Interactions between UHI and urban atmospheric pollution;
• Impact of urban overheating on mortality and morbidity;
• Impact of extreme heat on local/global energy use;
• Impact of extreme heat on economic growth;
• Progress of urban heat adaptation and mitigation strategies;
• Heat-related awareness, knowledge, management and policies.

We are interested in a broad range of urban-heat-related studies from various parts of the world in order to shine more light on the peculiarity and seriousness of urban-heat-related issues and hopefully help enrich the ongoing scientific discourse on the urban livability agenda and science-driven urban design policies/practices.

Dr. Jack Ngarambe
Prof. Dr. Geun Young Yun
Prof. Dr. Jin Woo Moon
Prof. Dr. Baojie He
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• key drivers of urban overheating
• local climates and building energy use
• urban heat island and urban pollution
• machine-learning-based UHI modelling
• urban heat island and ongoing urbanization
• heat adaptation and mitigation