Trento City microClimate Changes

Trento City microClimate Changes is a master thesis dissertation that aims to investigate the challenges related to extreme weather events in urban areas and to propose strategies to mitigate the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect.

The project is carried out in Trento (IT), a town of 117’000 inhabitants located in the Adige Valley, and it seeks to define the vulnerabilities related to higher temperatures and to enhance the opportunities of making the town more climate resilient and energy performative.

The study identifies the microclimates of the urban environment of Trento, and it defines the heat-related risk to set different priorities of intervention. Moreover, it proposes a framework of intervention aiming at reusing existing spaces and surfaces to regenerate them and make them more liveable, by creating a sequence of multifunctional public spaces.  

The project proposes a guideline to implement mitigation strategies at the urban scale, providing devices and actors involved, based on an approach of integration of the urban components with elements of Green and Blue Infrastructure.  A pilot area is defined to experiment a series of design practices to make the neighbourhood climate proof: pervious open spaces, eco-boulevard with canyon of trees, performative buildings extensions, that increase evapotranspiration and shading, to increase microclimate comfort.

The guidelines aim to promote replicable solutions, based on the opportunities already present in the environment, to both adapt and mitigate climate changes and to make the town more liveable.