The Role of Residential Neighborhood Urban Features on Outdoor Thermal Comfort, El-Rehab City, Egypt

Residents are seeking to live in a residential neighborhood with high quality of living. Different research confirmed that the design quality of urban features is attracting residents to live in neighborhoods and affecting residents’ health and well-being. But the question we must ask is, does the design of these urban features provide thermal comfort in the neighborhood’s outdoor spaces, increase sustainability, and reduce temperatures in residential outdoor spaces? Therefore, the main purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of urban features design (number of buildings, green surface, building distance to green surface, building direction, paths configuration, building height, proximity to parking areas, distance between buildings) on the thermal comfort parameters (air temperature, wind speed, wind flow, relative humidity, surface temperature) of the outdoor open spaces. Two stages of El-Rehab city in Egypt were selected (with different urban features design) at the same climate zone (Stage 1 and 8). Urban features were analyzed by using geographic information systems (GIS) software and AutoCAD, and the simulation of outdoor thermal comfort was analyzed by ENVI-met software. The results proved that the difference in urban feature’s design like (building direction, spaces between buildings, green surface area, proximity of parking areas) is affecting outdoor thermal comfort.