Systematic review of urban green space strategies for microclimate regulation and urban heat island mitigation in central business districts

Abstract The process of urbanization has led to increased land transformation in central business districts (CBDs), which has resulted in decreased access to urban green space (UGS) and created more severe impacts from the urban heat island (UHI) effect. Anti-UHI strategies exist as a topic of active debate, yet their actual implementation into binding planning frameworks and morphology-responsive planning systems shows limited occurrence. The systematic literature review synthesizes UGS optimization, microclimate management, sustainable urban planning, planning strategies and CBD morphology as its main research themes through its analysis of 198 peer-reviewed articles which researchers published between 1975 and December 2023 in Scopus and Web of Science. The findings demonstrate that sustainability declarations do not match actual spatial planning requirements for highly populated commercial districts. The paper introduces Urban Concord as a conceptual integration framework linking measurable thermal performance indicators with density-responsive planning and regulatory tools in CBDs. The literature review demonstrates the requirement for planning tools that focus on performance to achieve better urban climate adaptation and sustainability goals which need to connect UGS optimization with microclimate modelling for CBD planning systems.