Climate alteration in the metropolitan area of Bari: temperatures and relationship with characters of urban context

Urban planning exerts influences on environmental, social and economic system related with the city. Processes of land transformation and city growth determine radical changes in urban landscape morphology and as a consequence they affect air temperature and energy exchange. The urbanization can bear on local climate more intensively than the global warming does. This is due to the rapidity of human made changes related to natural ones. The present work analyzes the state of the art of studies involved in studying urban climate anomalies – Urban Heat Islands (UHI) – in order to explore relationship between urban planning morphology and urban climate. The research aim wants to indentify how urban geometry can be related with climate alterations in order to provide guidelines for planners to frame urban form planning and environmental quality. The case study is the city of Bari, located on the coast of the Mediterranean sea, in Apulia, one of the regions in Italy.