L’impatto della morfologia urbana e della vegetazione sulla qualità dell’aria

Gli spazi urbani sono spesso caratterizzati da bassi livelli di qualità dell’aria. Si rende pertanto necessario agire contemporaneamente a scala globale, con azioni mirate alla diminuzione delle emissioni, ed a scala locale, con azioni volte alla riduzione delle concentrazioni di inquinanti.Outdoor air pollution is an important environmental health problem affecting in particular people living in dense urban areas. The existing policies mainly aim to act directly on the source of pollution by fixing national emission thresholds for the main air pollutants and by boosting the use of energy-efficiency measures in urban planning and the spread of low-exhaust emission vehicles in the transport sector. Thanks to these effective policies, emissions have decreased considerably over the past decades, however, air pollutants concentrations are still too high and air quality problem persists. Mitigation actions, aimed at reducing pollutants concentrations, can be significant if applied at local scale to the most vulnerable areas of the city. The research focuses on how buildings arrangement and vegetation distribution could effectively contribute in retaining, or dispersing, air pollutants in order to obtain more liveable and healthier outdoor urban spaces