Sustainable Planning of Open Urban Areas in Developing Countries: A Lesson from a Case Study in Tel Aviv, Israel

Advocating design codes that consider human comfort in outdoor public spaces is relevant to cities worldwide, even more so for developing or underdeveloped countries. And yet, developing design codes is not a straightforward task. Although the threat of climate change is global, its implications are regional. Moreover, these changes' implications are subject to cultural, social, and ethnic differences, rendering a global manual of "how to design public outdoor spaces" improbable. This chapter suggests expanding the research on interrelations among climate change, cities, culture, and the way climate change influences participants' thermal, emotional, and perceptual well-being in public spaces as a key step in developing contextual design codes for outdoor public spaces. It also suggests focusing on the developing world where outdoor spaces are extremely vulnerable and available studies are scarce. The remainder of this chapter elaborates on this argument, beginning with a brief discussion of climate conditions and change in developing countries. The subsequent section presents some lessons from a contemporary development of an urban park in Jaffa, Israel.