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Volume 113 Issue 3
- Research article
by
1School of English Language and culture, Xi’an Fanyi University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710105, China
- Volume 113 Issue 3
- Pages: 107
- - 120
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20231133-07
Hot-desert deck parks need thermal evidence of whether occupied spaces reach comfort-relevant end states, not whether the design reduces some calculated heat load. In this paper, a novel Residual Thermal Sufficiency Analysis (RTSA) is formulated based on COMFA, an approach used to quantify distances between final temperatures and comfort intervals for adults and children. The application of RTSA is demonstrated for a 31,700 m2 freeway deck park in downtown El Paso, Texas, considering the documented local climate, ENVI-met simulation validation, COMFA sensation limits, changes in site-scale microclimatology, and four occupied-place level COMFA transitions. RTSA helps answer questions about which spaces reach thermal sufficiency after the design, which do not and remain either warm or cool, and what physical control measures need to be applied to close the rest of the distance. The response to intervention at the site scale was relatively modest, involving a 0.67 ∘C drop in air temperature and a 0.30% increase in relative humidity, while substantial reductions were achieved for solar radiation (−25.2%) and wind speed (−17.2%). At the place scale, however, a different ranking emerged. Water plaza had the greatest reduction in COMFA value (from 247 to 69 W m−2), yet it retained significant adult and child heat residual (19 and 29 W m−2 according to Brown and Gillespie thresholds). Amphitheater and pedestrian street had similar performance, falling from 147 and 149 to 46 and 42 W m−2, achieving adult sufficiency under the Brown and Gillespie limits, respectively. Pedestrian street had just 2 W m−2 exceeding the child upper limit. Winter green patch was adjusted from −101 to −55 W m−2. The findings highlight the necessity of focusing thermal design decisions on residual distance, occupant category, season, and activity zones. RTSA can show designers in which spaces further canopy, misting, surface cooling, or permeable shelter from wind needs to be considered.
- Research article
by
1Department of Urban Design and Landscape Planning Greenfield State University United States
- Volume 113 Issue 3
- Pages: 91
- - 106
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20231133-06
Urban green infrastructure planning initiatives are becoming increasing likely to include promises related to climate change, stormwater management, urban heat mitigation, ecological restoration, and enhanced quality of public space. The question of the equity effectiveness of these plans hinges upon whether promises translate into institution-building around definition, recognition of disparate vulnerability, transfer of community control into design and implementation, impact assessment, anti-displacement, and just allocation of green jobs. This paper investigates 122 green infrastructure plans across 20 American cities in relation to ten categories of equity practice, namely definition, framing, justice, planning, design, implementation, evaluation, hazard, value, and labor. The research includes development of Ordinal Sufficiency Partitioning as a method of reading five-state plan quality ratings as ordered distributions rather than interval-scale scores. Results show an institutional discontinuity. Value, planning, and hazard practices exhibit the greatest development, characterized by sufficiency ratios of 45.0%, 43.4%, and 41.2%, respectively. Definition and justice exhibit least sufficiency, scoring at 8.8% and 11.9% with non-operative drag above 86%. Design and labor categories have been minimally developed with functional sufficiency at 2.0% and 4.0%, respectively. With respect to life-cycle practice, value has lower sufficiency compared to procedure and distribution; that is, plans often articulate potential benefits while failing to specify a definition of equitable benefit, identify decision makers and provide oversight thereafter. In terms of addressing the fundamental questions asked, the findings speak to themselves, revealing that officially-sanctioned green infrastructure plans lack a cohesive and effective process of building equity-operability.
Call for Papers
Landscape Architecture invites submissions for Volume 2026, Issue 3, scheduled for publication in September 2026. The journal welcomes high-quality scholarly contributions that advance research, theory, criticism, and applied knowledge in landscape architecture and related fields.