Comprehensive Potentials of Urban Cooling Strategies in an Old Urban Block of Xi’an, China

This study aims to evaluate the comprehensive potential of cooling strategies in an old urban block in Xi’an, China, where the outdoor environment requires significant improvement. The Luomashi block is chosen as a case study. The strategies include cool pavement (CP) and facade (CF), green facade (GF) and roof (GR), tree-planting (TP), water fountain (WF) and mist (MR), and their combinations. The results show that most of the individual strategies can reduce the canyon air temperature and the physiological equivalent temperature (PET) at the pedestrian height of 1.5 m throughout the day. The combination of CP, CF, CR, TP, WF, and MR (CC1) can reduce the daily N–S and E–W canyon air temperatures by 1.4 °C and 1.0 °C, respectively. For the combination of CP, GF, GR, TP, WF, and MR (CC2), the reductions are 1.4 °C and 1.1 °C. Meanwhile, these two combination scenarios can reduce the daily mean PET by 2.71 °C and 2.87 °C, and reduce the daily cooling energy demand by 8.4% and 8.9%. The exploratory findings reveal the site-specific cooling potential of these particular mitigation configurations within the historical fabric of the Luomashi block, highlighting that the performance is highly dependent on the chosen baseline parameters and local morphological constraints.