Garden Surface Temperature Contrasts Across Urbanization Gradients: Implications for Sustainable Planning

To inform sustainable urban and rural landscape planning, this study examines summer daytime land surface temperature (LST) contrasts at 285 garden sites across urbanization gradients in Jiangsu, China. Temperature contrast (TC) is the median within-scene difference between a 500–1000 m reference annulus and a 200 m core—positive values indicate a cooler core. Mean TC was 0.034, −0.310, and −0.588 °C in low, medium, and high urbanization classes, respectively, with a small distributional effect. Garden functional type and its interaction with urbanization did not show significant effects. A standardized model explained 56.3% of TC variation, while component regressions for core and reference LST yielded R2 values of 0.736 and 0.691. Water and vegetation indicators were more strongly associated with core LST, and urbanization with reference LST. A supplementary same-scene analysis of 6 spatial definitions covered 282 sites and quantified how TC estimates changed with core and reference radii. MGWR explained 68.0% of in-sample TC variation, with the greatest fitted geographic differentiation for water probability. These findings support context-sensitive assessment of green–blue infrastructure in sustainable urban and rural landscape planning.