Examining the cooling effect of green parking on street

Abstract

This study starts from a hypothesis that increased green surface in residential street as a results of the green parking policy may reduce UHI(Urban Heat Island) effect on the street. We analytically classified the physical characteristics of streets and examined the cooling effect of green parking on the street. The basic research design follows the principles of a comparison study. The focused study area are two streets in neighboring residential block; one is a conventional residential street and the other is a street redesigned by green parking system. Physical features of each street were classified into five elements; walls material (brick, paint), fenestra, ground pavement (neo-stone block, asphalt), vegetation, and other objects on streets (vehicle, streetlight). The temperature data on 12:00PM, 1:00PM and 2:00PM were collected with a thermal infrared camera (FRIR T440) at 3 spots in each street and were analyzed using ArcGIS 10.2.1. The results of t-test and temperature distribution showed that the cooling effects of green parking was mainly generated by three reasons. First, the surface temperature of green parking areas is lower than that of conventional street. Second, the area proportion of each physical element is different, and street of green parking have higher proportion of low temperature elements. Third, in street of green parking, the vegetated areas tend to deeply penetrate the residential blocks while the vegetated areas in conventional streets are limited to the walls. Overall, the findings consistently indicate that green parking system on residential street is very effective to reduce temperature on street and UHI.