Microclimate Control for Outdoor Thermal Comfort in Apartment Residential Green Spaces: A Systematic Review of Climate-Responsive Design Strategies and Assessment Methods

Urban overheating is an increasingly prevalent threat to the liveability and thermal comfort of outdoor spaces in residential apartment areas. While urban green spaces can regulate microclimates and mitigate heat, there remains a lack of evidence on how design interventions can integrate environmental performance with human comfort. Following PRISMA guidelines, this systematic review synthesises 22 peer-reviewed studies from Web of Science and Scopus (2015–2025), selected from an initial set of 187 records. The review reveals that existing studies primarily quantify environmental parameters such as temperature, humidity and wind speed while inadequately addressing multifactor interactions and subjective comfort responses. To address this gap, the review proposes an integrated framework that links environmental metrics, human perceptual data, and climate-responsive design strategies. The findings further reveal that vegetation configuration, shading, surface materials, and spatial layout are key design levers, although their effectiveness varies across climate zones. Notably, this review offers a novel contribution by systematically identifying the interplay between objective microclimatic variables and subjective human comfort responses—an interaction largely overlooked in prior apartment-green-space research. Unlike earlier studies focusing on single-factor optimisation, the proposed framework provides a transferable, multi-dimensional approach that bridges design practice, environmental modelling, and comfort evaluation. Future empirical studies should quantify the benefits to both the environment and human comfort to support evidence-based urban planning and climate adaptation.