Designing With Climate: Using Parking Lots to Mitigate Urban Climate

Urban areas are known to have different climatic conditions than their rural counterparts including higher temperatures, greater wind speeds, and increased precipitation otherwise known as urban heat islands, urban wind, and urban precipitation. These phenomena are all caused by the design and form of the city. Large amounts of impervious surface area, obtrusive buildings, and a lack of vegetation in the urban landscape all contribute to these problems. Landscape architects have the potential to mitigate urban heat islands, urban wind, and urban precipitation by understanding what causes these phenomena and knowing a few key principles by which to mitigate them. Parking lots can cover up to half of the land area in cities and offer a great opportunity to correct urban climate problems. This thesis looks at current United States parking lot ordinances to determine if and how well principles of designing with climate have been incorporated. Guidelines are then given to help in the construction of a parking lot ordinance that aims to ameliorate the city's mesoclimate. A design is then created that shows how these parking lot guidelines could be incorporated into a functional, aesthetically pleasing parking lot.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Landscape Architecture

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Landscape Architecture

Department dc:contributor.department

Landscape Architecture

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Harris, Amanda M.

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Bork, Dean R.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Johnson, Benjamin C.
• Kane, Brian C.

• Urban Trees
• Parking Lots
• Urban Climate
• Green Lots

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-11212004-190947

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/35785