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Volume 114 Issue 2
- Research article
by
1Islamic Azad University of Ramsar
- Volume 114 Issue 2
- Pages: 66
- - 79
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20241142-05
In urban gardens, shade, culture, recreation, biodiversity and many other positive attributes are provided; yet, in addition to providing these positive traits, plants found in gardens could contribute towards increasing allergies through the release of allergenic pollen. The current paper uses DBALM in the assessment of two urban public gardens located in Funchal, Madeira: Municipal Garden and Santa Catarina Park. In particular, a direct analysis of the Index of Urban Green Zone Allergenicity (\(IUGZA\)), along with the use of threshold position, Shannon-evenness buffering, green-surface normalisation, latent biological activation, contribution concentration and replacement leverage is used. In the first place, \(IUGZA\) is 0.39 for Municipal Garden and 0.16 for Santa Catarina Park, implying that only the former exceeds the concern threshold of 0.30. In addition, the use of diversity buffering helped preserve this differentiation, since \(DBP\) is 0.257 and 0.070, correspondingly. This differentiation could not be explained through the comparison of the gardens’ areas and numbers of plant species, yet differences in trees’ evenness, contribution concentration and pressure in planted surfaces were evident. There are four plants that account for 72.54% of contribution signal, namely Ginkgo biloba, Cinnamomum camphora, Celtis australis and Araucaria columnaris. Their functional replacement would lead to decreasing \(IUGZA\) from 0.39 to 0.107, while their partial replacement would decrease this value to 0.249. Overall, Santa Catarina Park shows less realised pressure, although it has higher latent biological activation, indicating surveillance needs there, rather than broad interventions.
- Research article
by
1College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
- Volume 114 Issue 2
- Pages: 52
- - 65
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20241142-04
Green roofs with large areas can contribute towards reducing roof level temperatures, although their effectiveness in densely populated urban environments is conditional upon the extent to which this cooling is experienced at pedestrian height and influenced by nearby high-rises. This study evaluates the impact of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center green roof and the adjacent Hudson Yards area in New York City for 2014, 2018, and 2021 urban geometries. The numerical framework consists of a 27316 m2 extensive green roof, a horizontal grid of 6 m by 6 m, vertical grid spacing of 2 m, building heights of 82 m and 740.08 m, and typical weather conditions. The maximum roof-level cooling decreases from 0.75 K in 2014 to 0.65 K in 2018 and 0.64 K in 2021, whereas the maximum pedestrian-level cooling reduces from 0.52 K to 0.45 K and 0.44 K. The transfer fraction of roof to street cooling stays almost the same at roughly 0.69, implying reduced cooling capacity without the disruption of vertical transport of thermal energy. Maximum median sky view factor is 0.184 for 2018 and 0.194 for 2021. For the 2021 form, the mean radiant temperature reduction during the day is estimated to be 1.65 °C, while the increase.
- Research article
by
1Harbin Inst Technol, Sch Civil Engn, Harbin 150090, Peoples R China
- Volume 114 Issue 2
- Pages: 34
- - 51
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20241142-03
Urban green infrastructure controls heat, stormwater, air quality, biodiversity, energy use, and human well-being via vegetation, soil, water, and interconnectivity. This paper constructs IMPACT-GI, an approach to scale-resolved weightage for climate-smart green infrastructure design. The data comprise 290 instances of indicators concerning air quality, biodiversity and ecological sustainability, energy performance, human well-being, heat-island mitigation, and water management; 66 instances of objective-scale and 60 instances of model-use. The balance of the indicators is evaluated based on normalised entropy of green-infrastructure indicators, specific to objectives and geospatial factors. Scale dispersion is calculated with respect to building scale, street scale, district scale, and urban scale. In heat-island mitigation, the indicator balance (0.987), scale dispersion (0.953), and transfer caution (0.040) values indicate high cross-scales. Energy efficiency has maximum transfer caution value of 0.607 because all scale observations are at building scale only. These weights help in replicable indicator selection, algorithm choice, and scale interpretation for urban green infrastructure planning.
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.