The study of local climate zones (LCZ) links urban morphology, land use and land cover types, human activity, and thermal properties, and provides a standard framework for studying urban climatic issues. In recent years, the LCZ scheme attracts more and more attention from climatologists, urban planners, environmental engineers, as well as architects due to its combination of urban climatic scientific research outputs and urban planning and morphology language. Urbanization and higher-density living, an ongoing and continued path of human development, brings various urban climatic and environmental problems. Urban development in a sustainable way is vital for high-density cities to build a comfortable living environment.This book is the first one presenting systematically the latest LCZ applications by taking Asian high-density cities as an example. Generally, four parts are introduced and discussed in this book. At first, a general background of urbanization and its impacts is introduced, and the basic knowledge of LCZ. The second part introduces the methodology and techniques of LCZ data development. In the third part, various applications of LCZ are demonstrated in practice, including application to urban heat island, land use and land cover analysis, wind environment, energy consumption, thermal comfort studies and so on. Lastly, this book concludes the progress, challenges, limitations, and future work of LCZ-related studies.The book will be of interest to all that are working on or interested in urban climate, sustainable urban development, and policy-making.
