Measuring the effectiveness of San Francisco’s planning standard for pedestrian wind comfort

ABSTRACT

In 1985, San Francisco adopted a wind comfort standard in its Downtown Area Plan in response to increasing concerns about the city’s downtown public open spaces becoming excessively windy. After 30 years of implementation, this study revisits the standard and examines its effectiveness in promoting pedestrian comfort. Seven hundred one valid samples were collected from 6 months of field study, which combined surveying pedestrians and on-site collection of microclimate data. Statistical analysis and an assessment using the physiological equivalent temperature show that 11 mph (4.92 m/s), the comfort criterion in places for walking, performs as an effective determinant of outdoor comfort in San Francisco. This study sheds light on climate-resilience of cities, as they have become key urban challenges today.

KEYWORDS:

• Wind
• outdoor thermal comfort
• urban planning
• field study
• physiological equivalent temperature (PET)
• San Francisco

Acknowledgements

We thank Michael Southworth, Peter Bosselmann, Edward Arens, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. We are also grateful to Se Woong Kim and Chaewoo Rhee for their kind assistance in the field study. This work was supported by the Hongik University new faculty research support fund.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In accordance with this journal’s manuscript guidelines that mandate use of SI units, speeds originally in mph will be presented in m/s in the rest of the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Hongik University new faculty research support fund.