- ‘Impenetrable’ Urban Maze Of East African Coastal Towns: Its impact on Climate Change    722 kb by    Njeru Njue, Peter & Musau, Kimeu | peter.njue@cantab.net    Short Outline East African coastal towns were planned on simple but essential rules which evolved over time. Builders responded to plots and followed cultural and religious dictates. Resultant amorphous urban fabric is the key to towns response 'to climate change. Abstract With climate change topic fast becoming an important item on every agenda today and more so in the built environment, our heritage sites find it difficult to cope. The coastal cities are very compact pedestrianized areas. From an aerial view, the patchwork of irregular roofs as a result of irregular plots seem impenetrable; a function of cultural and religious dictates. This paper shows that despite the towns did not develop according to a pre-designed plan, the complex urban morphology is not result of chance. Results of scientific field survey indicate that planning of the buildings was a major factor in ensuring thermal comfort along the streets and houses thus reducing the town’s carbon footprint. Parameters analyzed are indoor and outdoor temperatures, materials and constructions techniques, urban design ratios as well as the behavioral aspects like clothing and activity patterns over the study period. Keywords Conservation area Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2010: Sustainable City - Developing World   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper