Within-Class and Neighborhood Effects on the Relationship between Composite Urban Classes and Surface Temperature

Understanding the relationship between urban structure and ecological function—or environmental performance—is important for the planning of sustainable cities, and requires examination of how components in urban systems are organized. In this paper, we develop a Structure of Urban Landscape (STURLA) classification, identifying common compositions of urban components using Berlin, Germany as a case study. We compute the surface temperature corresponding to each classification grid cell, and perform within-cell and neighborhood analysis for the most common composite classes in Berlin. We found that with-class composition and neighborhood composition as well as the interaction between them drive surface temperature. Our findings suggest that the spatial organization of urban components is important in determining the surface temperature and that specific combinations, such as low-rise buildings surrounded by neighborhood trees, or mid-rise buildings surrounded by high-rise buildings, compound to create a cooling effect. These findings are important for developing an understanding of how urban planning can harness structure-function relationships and improve urban sustainability.