The city

This chapter explores past and contemporary practices developed to reduce climatic stress in urban areas. The concept of urban climate design captures a set of measures advanced to mitigate adverse atmospheric effects of growth, morphology and socio-economic metabolism in urban areas. Such measures have traditionally relied on empirically-intensive studies of urban micro-meteorologies and sometimes deployed to tackle problems that stemmed from local, highly specific characteristics of cities’ form and function, such as air pollution or urban heat island. It is argued that such organic, targeted approached deserve more recognition in current strategies to address cities’ climatic futures, most of which gloss over the realistic possibilities and local differences and promote top-down, generic fixes that have little basis in local context. Using results from a project fieldwork, the chapter looks at the potential benefits of urban climate governance based on the existing micro-meteorological traditions that may be act as helpful correctives in conventional thinking about cities in climate change.