| Summary: | The way the countless pieces of the urban puzzle are distributed in space and how they are carved on natural soil as well as the fluidity, with which each piece interacts with all the others, is crucial to determine the (un)success of these artificial landscapes. This success may be seen in a countless number of positive impacts and / or negative impacts on the ecosystem in which it operates. The human health and wellbeing is one of many possible signs for assessing the performance of an urban form, for example, in modifying the climatic context and the quality of atmospheric air. In this sense, all methodologies that give more objectivity to urban forms classification are very useful to help the understanding these cause-effect relationships. In this exercise, was used the methodological strategy of Schwarz (2010), to classify the variety of urban forms in the Porto’s Greater Metropolitan Area (GAMP), which is already known, created profound changes in local and regional climate and generated a severe increase in the risks to human health due to the amplification of the negative effects of some episodes thermal extremes. The results of this exercise allowed us to adjust in a more objective way the shape and magnitude of positive thermal anomalies suggested by the formula of Oke (1973) application to the GAMP.
|
|---|