Assessment of bioclimatic sensitive spatial planning in a Turkish city, Eskisehir

Abstract

The city of Eskişehir is located in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey, where harsh continental climatic characteristics are prevalent i.e. cold winters and hot summers. Quality and quantity of research studies on bioclimatic comfort or outdoor thermal environment as a subject have long been increasing all over the world and in Turkey in recent years (for nearly 20 years). Outdoor bioclimatic comfort conditions, which are counted to be among the human quality of life indicators in an urban environment together with other physical, social and economic ones such as air quality, GDP, social activity possibilities, help cities make urban spaces more livable and are now used as a concrete value instead of mean values of some climatic elements in order to give an idea about the climatic conditions of a city. It was aimed in the present research study to determine 1) hourly bioclimatic comfort conditions in Eskişehir city center during sultry summer days considering bioclimatic comfort values calculated according to the 12-year data obtained between 2007 and 2018 from the meteorological stations representing urban (U; Regional Meteorology Administration Station surrounded by a densely structured area), semiurban (SU; Anadolu University Meteorology Station) and rural (R; Eskişehir Airport Meteorology Station) areas using physiological equivalent temperature index (PET) and RayMan software in the hottest months of the year (between May and September; 5 months), 2) spatial distribution of these comfort values in decades (ten – day intervals) using Geographic Information Systems (GIS; ArcGIS 10.1 software program and raster maps taking into consideration elevation and land use and 3) what urban design and planning principles might be adopted against the adverse thermal comfort conditions triggered by urban heat island (UHI) effect. It was seen as a result of the study that the poorest comfort conditions are provided in urban area (U; the sultriest area) while the rural area (R) is the most advantageous one for the comfort conditions. New bioclimate – sensitive urban design principles were taken into consideration to create bioclimatically more comfortable areas i.e. out of heat stress, windier and less humid sites open to prevalent wind direction.