Relationships Between Urban Form, Microclimate, and Energy Efficiency in Hot Climates

Urban areas across the globe face increased pressures to adapt to variations in energy demands and increased impacts of urban heat islands (UHIs). Urban form links closely to both energy consumption and microclimate, with factors such as density and sky view factors having a marked impact on wind reduction, surface temperatures, and outdoor comfort. Although both relationships have been widely studied independently, emerging research highlights important trade-offs between outdoor thermal comfort and energy performance. It also shows that the impacts of urban form vary significantly by climate and context. This has led to calls for a more standardized analysis approach, with some authors advocating for multi-objective optimization implementations. In hot climates, where UHI impacts are expected to be more pronounced under climate change, identifying trade-offs is challenging due to a lack of data covering urban morphology and energy modelling. This paper presents a standardized analysis method combining key urban morphology, microclimate, outdoor comfort, and energy indicators. The method’s potential to reveal relationships between urban form and performance indicators and its suitability for integration with multi-objective optimization are evaluated. For this purpose, a comparative analysis of three hot climate case studies is conducted: Al Fahidi (Dubai, UAE), Al Balad (Jeddah, SA), and Masdar City (Abu Dhabi, UAE). The analysis integrates spatial mapping of wind and surface temperature patterns, capturing day–night variations and interactions between three-dimensional form, spatial wind, surface temperature, and outdoor comfort patterns.