Internal and External Landscape Features of 18 Parks in Hangzhou, China That Cool the Park and the Surrounding Urban Areas: Strategies for Other Cities

As one of China’s “New Four Furnaces”, the city of Hangzhou faces significant heat challenges exacerbated by rapid urbanization. Urban parks offer effective nature-based solutions, but optimizing their multi-dimensional cooling performance—encompassing cooling area (PCA), efficiency (PCE), intensity (PCI), and gradient (PCG)—remains a key challenge. This study quantitatively analyzed the internal and external landscape features of 18 parks in Hangzhou, revealing that park cooling performance is not simply a case of “bigger is better.” We found that parks with more complex shapes and irregular boundaries exhibited higher cooling efficiency per unit area (PCE) compared to larger parks with smooth, simple shapes, though sometimes at the expense of peak PCI. Furthermore, the surrounding built environment is critical: high building density within a 300 m buffer zone was found to significantly impede the spatial extent of the cooling effect (PCA). Based on these findings, we propose that to effectively mitigate urban heat, cities should (1) shift focus away from creating large, isolated parks with smooth boundaries; (2) prioritize a network of smaller, morphologically diverse parks with irregular edges that extend into the community; and (3) enhance each park’s cooling reach through strategies like green streets and tree-lined paths. These approaches offer tangible, actionable guidance for designing high-performance cooling green infrastructure in dense urban environments.