A Framework of Thermal Sensitive Urban Design Benchmarks: Potentiating the Longevity of Auckland's Public Realm

One of the key objectives of contemporary urban design is to ensure the quality and activity within urban public spaces. Presented as a progressively emerging paradigm in this process, the effects of urban climatology are increasingly elucidating the need for further climate responsive environments. Moreover, this interest is one that shall increase along with the progression of climate change effects upon outdoor environments. Nevertheless, it is often that climatic assessments lack bottom-up climatic indicators, tools and practical benchmarks. As a result, this obstructs local decision making, and practices of localised adaptive design. In an effort to address such discrepancies, this paper launches a framework of international precedents of built and conceptual projects that address thermal comfort levels in public spaces. This organisation will be cross-referenced with theory that supports its structure and typological division. With Auckland as the focal case study, the solutions that are extracted from the framework will be scrutinised in order to shape new potential measures, and launch new considerations in Auckland's local policy and design guidelines. In this way, microclimatic concerns are hence framed into an opportunity to potentiate the use and longevity of Auckland's public realm.