Urban Obstacles Influence on Street Canyon Ventilation: A Brief Review

Abstract

Many research articles explore new designs and how to arrange barriers/obstacles to improve roadside air quality and ventilation within the urban street canyon. These obstacles are generally categorized into porous, non-porous and mixed type. Porous barriers include vegetated shrubs and trees; non-porous barriers include parked cars, low boundary walls, etc., while mixed barriers combine both porous and non-porous barriers. Moreover, new developments can benefit from added design flexibility using lift-up building design and building porosity as a promising way of improving ventilation. This short paper reviews the different research studies conducted on obstacles/barriers in an urban canyon which helps improve air quality and also highlights potential future research.