River corridor ventilation analysis and riverfront planning strategy in Tianjin’s urban core area

School of Architecture, Tianjin University, 92 Weijin Road, Nankai district, 300072 Tianjin, Peoples R China

^* Corresponding author: chentian5561@vip.sina.com

Abstract

River corridors are important potential wind path in cities. This paper took the river in the core area of Tianjin as the research object. By using two ventilation indicators as frontal area index (FAI) and frontal area density (FAD), the overall ventilation and pedestrian level ventilation of riverfront area were quantitatively analyzed. The result showed that contrary to common belief, due to the high FAI of the riverfront area, river corridor in Tianjin’s core area did not play the role of wind path but obstructed the wind flow. Also the low FAD indicator of the riverfront area lead to a better outdoor comfort in summer but worse comfort in winter. After verified the correlation between planning indicators (floor area ratio, building height and site coverage) and ventilation indicators, a cluster pattern urban riverfront development mode was proposed. Also a ventilation corridor planning methods based on the river direction and dominant wind direction was suggested. These planning strategy will be more conductive to the wind path and cooling island potential of the river corridors in urban core area.