Conclusions and Outlook

LCZ has been a powerful tool for urban climate studies, linking scientific findings with urban planning practice. In general, LCZ-related studies can be classified as LCZ data development with various classification methods and applications to different urban climate fields, including urban heat islands, wind environment, air pollution, thermal comfort, energy consumption, carbon emission, land use and land cover change, numerical modeling and so on. Despite the significant progress in LCZ-related studies, limitations still exist. First, the accuracy of LCZ data should be further improved, which is the foundation of subsequent application studies. Second, balancing localization and standardization of the LCZ classification system remains challenging. Third, regarding planning practice, inconsistency between current planning systems and the LCZ scheme still needs consideration.