A Multiscalar Assessment of Urban Heat Effects on Walkability in Ankara

Urban heat, one of the prominent outcomes of climate change, significantly impacts public health, specifically within the domain of active mobility. It adversely affects walkability and citizens’ daily life in cities. Therefore, analyzing and mitigating the impacts of urban heat can encourage walkability and ease urban life. This research uses an integrated assessment method to quantitatively analyze the multiscalar effects of urban heat on walkability in Ankara. Using open-access data and remote sensing techniques, this study proposes a method of temporal and multiscalar analysis to monitor and quantify changes in land surface characteristics by producing land use/land cover, land surface temperature (LST), and normalized difference vegetation index maps. It further investigates the cooling potential of specific urban design strategies including different ground surfaces, tree types, and shading strategies using the ENVI-met program. It ultimately reveals the spatial patterns of urban hotspots at the provincial, metropolitan, district, and neighborhood levels, and visualizes differences in LST according to the distribution of land use, vegetation quality, intensity, and spatial distribution of urban sprawl. Microclimate simulations of urban design scenarios further identify localized air temperature patterns and hourly variations. It also explores the impact of urban heat on walkability-associated behaviors to foresee future urban planning and design heat mitigation strategies.