Synergistic Landscape Design Strategies to Renew Thermal Environment: A Case Study of a Cfa-Climate Urban Community in Central Komatsu City, Japan

An effective community landscape design consistently impacts thermally comfortable outdoor conditions and climate adaptation. Therefore, constructing sustainable communities requires a resilience assessment of existing built environments for optimal design mechanisms, especially the renewal of thermally resilient communities in densely populated cities. However, the current community only involves green space design and lacks synergistic landscape design for renewing the central community. The main contribution of this study is that it reveals a three-level optimization method to validate the Synergistic Landscape Design Strategies (SLDS) (i.e., planting, green building envelope, water body, and urban trees) for renewing urban communities. A typical Japanese community in central Komatsu City was selected to illustrate the simulation-based design strategies. The microclimate model ENVI-met reproduces communities involving 38 case implementations to evaluate the physiologically equivalent temperature (PET) and microclimate condition as a measure of the thermal environments in humid subtropical climates. The simulation results indicated that the single-family buildings and real estate flats were adapted to the summer thermal mitigation strategy of water bodies and green roofs (W). In small-scale and large-scale models, the mean PET was lowered by 1.4–5.0 °C (0.9–2.3 °C), and the cooling effect reduced mean air temperature by 0.4–2.3 °C (0.5–0.8 °C) and improved humidification by 3.7–15.2% (3.7–5.3%). The successful SLDS provides precise alternatives for realizing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the renewal of urban communities.