Building urban heat resilience through nature-based solutions - Design strategies for the Gasometer area of Turin

The climate change urgency has become an underlying condition when planning and designing urban areas, both new and already built. In recent years, nature-based solutions (NBSs) and other associated measures have become increasingly researched as plausible pathways to reach urban heat resilience that answer the environmental, social, and economic demands of an urban setting conditioned by the dynamic impacts of climate change, especially the phenomena of urban heat islands (UHIs). As the relevance of the topic is on the rise, so is the plurality of measures and approaches developed to provide a functional solution. This opens an opportunity to develop a decision-assisting tool that would make the selection process of an appropriate solution easier. Based on a relationship between specific urban conditions and the desired impact on climate change threats through connection with ecosystem services (ESSs), an interaction matrix linking NBSs with ESSs for each specific Urban Atlas Land Use Land Cover (LULC) class is developed. The matrix is further utilized to assist in creating the urban heat resilience strategy in one of the UHI intervention areas in Turin, Italy. Relations between NBSs and ESSs are mapped using the existing literature on NBSs with special attention to European climate change mitigation and adaptation guidelines, while relations between NBSs and LULC classes are mapped based on World Bank guidelines applicable globally with a focus on those NBSs implementable in urban European context. These connections, together with local planning codes and regulations, informed the strategy for the Gasometer area in Turin supported by scenario modeling done with InVEST software. The results of this work demonstrate the environmental, social, and economic value of urban green areas and contribute to mainstreaming the use of NBS in combating the effects of climate change.