Sustainable Urban Regeneration with Wind and Thermal Environment Optimization: Design Roadshow of a Historic Town in China

Abstract

With the acceleration of urbanization, many traditional buildings have been dismantled and built indiscriminately, resulting in a uniform urban landscape. The problem of urban microclimate has been aggravated, and the renovation of historic districts, especially including the renewal of microclimate, has become an important component of sustainable urban renewal. The old commercial street in Huili Ancient City is used as an example in this paper. Through literature research, we note that previous studies have mainly examined the renewal of historic districts from the perspective of the old city environment, while most of the traditional neighborhood renewal designs have neglected the wind and heat environments. Combining the limitations of previous studies and field research, we summarized the current problems of the neighborhood and developed specific renovation strategies for the identified problems in terms of historical and cultural heritage, the relationship between the old and the new, and the layout of green building technologies. In addition, the green building strategy was used to optimize the microclimate environment of the neighborhood, and the wind and heat environment simulation was conducted to evaluate the modeling of the renovated neighborhood. The results show that the outdoor wind environment is better in winter than in summer, and the natural ventilation environment of the neighborhood could be optimized by optimizing the building layout to form an alleyway wind. The indoor wind–heat environment simulation was carried out with the Green Pottery Experience Hall as an example, and the indoor and outdoor air circulation and ventilation were good, and the comfort of the human thermal environment was high. This paper explores the updating strategy of the historic district in the transition zone between old and new and the wind–heat environment simulation and evaluation of green building renovation, which provides a new perspective for the related renovation research and the optimization strategy of the microclimate environment in the district.