Urban green areas and their scales of approach in tropical climate: a review

Abstract

Urban green area is the set of intra-urban areas, with different sizes and types of vegetation cover. The presence of urban vegetation minimizes temperatures, improves environmental quality and brings significant benefits to city users. This article presents a Systematic Literature Review (RSL) in a time frame of a decade and intends to identify and analyze the main scales approach used in research on urban vegetation in tropical climates. The method was based on the principle of the PRISMA Statement, with an execution protocol for the identification, registration, inclusion and analysis of articles extracted from the Scopus and Web of Science databases, using the terms “green areas”, “urban thermal comfort” and “tropical climates” for the elaboration of the Search Strings. Thirty articles were selected for a systemic evaluation. The results indicated that the highest percentage occurred in the Urban Microscale - 53.33% of the articles, subdivided into four areas of application: Urban Cutting, Street Canyon, University Campus and Green Space; followed by the Urban Mesoscale - 40% of the articles, and two application areas: City and Neighborhood; and finally, the Macroscale - 6.67% of the articles, and with only one area of ​​application: Metropolitan Region. In this review, the use of vegetation as a cooling strategy in the urban environment was predominantly observed among the results, even at different scales of approach. Therefore, it is expected that the literary findings serve as subsidies and directions for further research.