Livability: The Direction to Mitigating Urban Heat Islands’ Effect, Achieving Healthy, Sustainable, and Resilient Cities, and the Coverage

Abstract

This chapter presents a prologue and background of the book and the reason why it focuses on urban heat island effect (UHIE) mitigation in cities, especially amid energy and food security, and climate change (CC) and COVID crises. It also provides a review on the challenges facing cities globally. Also, the chapter concentrates on understanding what is livability, urban heat islands (UHIs), and their definitions and causes, as well as the significance of mitigating UHIE, including citizen attitudes, connectivity to nature, and learning through neighborhood’s access to clean transport and green spaces post-COVID-19. In addition, the chapter highlights the needs for reducing UHIE in megacities and understands the approaches to attain livability, sustainable development with emphasis on urban biomimicry through ecosystem service-based solutions to transform gray infrastructure to green infrastructure (GI) and blue infrastructure (BI) to lower the cooling load needed as a result of UHI in the built environments, as well as enhance health and well-being to attain the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Moreover, the chapter attempts to answer the thoughts about how can urban green coverage (UGC) and wetlands aid in developing urban spaces and creating green and healthier cities? It also portrays the role of GI and BI in CC adaptation. Furthermore, this chapter presents models and ranking of the best livable cities globally. At the end, it provides the readers with a full comprehension of the structure book, which is articulated over two main parts and encompasses seven chapters inclusively. Finally, the chapter depicts a final note from the lead author about UHIE and its role in creating livable and sustainable cities.