Solar performance-driven urban development: the case of western Sydney, Australia

Urban densification, a response to population growth, poses adverse impacts on built environments. Limited access to sunlight is one of these consequences. Solar radiation and daylight affect urban canyons in different ways, including thermal comfort and illuminance levels. A balance between summer and solar heat gain can alleviate solar thermal considerations. This becomes even more important in an urban context like Western Sydney with an air temperature of around 6 to 10 degrees hotter than Inner Sydney (during extreme heat events). Additionally, Western Sydney is predicted to absorb two-thirds of the population growth of the Sydney region. Nevertheless, the urban development trend in this region doesn't seem to meet the requirements of an environmentally sustainable scheme covering solar geometry-based design principles. Therefore, this study aims to develop a general urban model based on the spatial analysis of the western Sydney suburbs and propose a novel integrated methodology to provide the optimal solar-based urban design solution. This process uses an evolutionary algorithm as a computational tool to optimize solar radiation and daylight levels in extreme weather conditions. Results offer the optimum value for a wide range of design parameters regarding solar geometry.