Effects of greenery on city comfort in different micro climatic conditions

Abstract

Due to the rapid urbanization of the world, more people leave villages and migrate to cities. The rapid growth of population and development in cities create uncomfortable living environment to human beings. These cities are significantly warmer than its suburbs/outskirts/peripheries. The main cause for this unfavourable condition is the modification of natural greenery by urban development and the changes of the thermal properties. This study discusses the effects of temperature and relative humidity on buildings with surrounding environment. This was carried out in Colombo, Kandy and Nuwera-Eliya, which belongs to three different micro climatic conditions. Temperature and humidity measurements were taken with the presence of two different green cover and were compared with each other. The temperature readings illustrated a clear difference between greenery and low greenery environment. Nuwara-Eliya showed a significant difference with the increase of altitude than the other two cities. Temperature effects of trees were very high in Colombo when compared with other two cities as the traffic congestion and heat island effects are very high there. In greenery, relative humidity variation in Colombo is identical with low altitude and cities having high heat island effect than other two cities. With the observations made, the effect of trees in law altitude areas are comparatively high than other cases with respect to thermal comfort of the cities.