LB 14-131 - A comprehensive framework of cooling effect-accessibility-urban development to assessing and planning park cooling services

With increasing global warming and rapid urbanization, extreme heat events occur frequently, threatening the health of urban dwellers. Urban parks can alleviate severe urban heating climate, and numerous studies have conducted a quantitative analysis of the park cooling effect only from a single dimension, lacking a multi-dimensional perspective that explores the equity of park cooling services. To address this issue, this study proposes a comprehensive framework of cooling effect–accessibility–urban development to assess and improve planning with 111 urban parks in Nanjing, China, as empirical objects. The results showed that the park cooling services index (PCSI) exhibited an unequal distribution: PCSI tended to decrease from the city center to the surrounding areas, with an average PCSI within the ring road 1.35 times higher than that outside the ring road. The value of cooling effect was relatively low, with the top two low levels accounting for 72.1%, and the low values of accessibility and urban development were concentrated outside the ring road. Additionally, the multiple linear regression between park landscape features and cooling effect indicated that increasing park area, blue-green proportion, and large patch index could effectively improve the cooling effect. Given the assessment results of park cooling service zoning, urban parks were further divided into four types according to supply–demand, and different intervention strategies and adaptive planning measures were developed. This study constructed a new comprehensive framework for park cooling services to improve the equity and efficiency of such services and provide planning guidelines to promote urban parks.