- The shape and magnitude of Porto`s heat island as a sustainability indicator    502 kb by    Monteiro, Ana & Madureira, Helena | anamonteirosousa@gmail.com    Short Outline A medium size city with no more than 300,000 inhabitants influenced by the sea and the river, with considerable high altitudinal differentiation, may generate positive anomalies above 6ºC. Abstract The city of Porto shows clearly in its territory, several testimonies of its more than 8 centuries of history. Some times the development options motivated the compression and concentration of people in small areas. In other phases it was decided to promote the expansion through some corridors and the city grew along those axis. The way of life, the building materials, the traffic, the green areas, etc. created a complex patchwork with different reactions towards the regional climate subsystem. The thermal positive anomalies measured near the ground or by remote sense images, especially during night, show clearly the importance of urban planning options to the climate comfort of urbanites. Keywords Urban Climate, Sustainability, Planning Policies Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2009: Low Carbon Cities   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper