Uploaded on 2016-04-10 by Lia_

![Lausanne - Bel air][1] The first image shows Lausanne town center and capture at least four aspects that contribute to the UHI effect: • The intense urbanization and use of urban materials like concrete and asphalt that store heat. • The energy balance is also affected by the lack of vegetation and standing water in urban areas, which inhibits cooling by evapotranspiration. • The automobile traffic jam that can result in greater green house gas emissions. • Nonetheless most of the buildings have medium sized heights (the tower is the exception) for a city, the urban fabric is much denser than at Lavaux, and can negatively affect the temperature distribution because of a greater amount of reflections between surfaces. ![Lavaux][2] The second image represents where I live, a village in the middle of the vineyards approximately 8km from the center of Lausanne. As we can see, there is a rather sparse urbanization on this region, even if we can notice a more dense continuity that follow the railway. Although close to Lausanne, as a protected Unesco world heritage site, the region of Lavaux has managed to prevent densification on the behalf of landscape and patrimonial protection. The UHI will not have the same impact on this region as it should have in Lausanne's town center, not only because of the lower urban density, but also other related conditions like fewer inhabitants that generate less heat, fewer built surfaces - materials like concrete and asphalt can store a lot of heat, or fewer traffic. In both cases proximity to the lake Geneva can be a factor that minimize the impact of the UHI. **3. Which are the measures you would propose?** I would start by reinforcing the cycle network, mainly in terms of security because the pledge of cycling safely would allow more people to change their form of commuting. Newer forms of combining the train with the bike should also be re-imagined to attract the long distance commuters that come daily to Lausanne to work or study. This investment, along with an awareness campaign could reduce or even eliminate the automobile from the town center, and so, reduce dramatically the greenhouse gas emissions in the center of Lausanne. **4. Is UHI effect concerning policy making in your area?** Fortunately the town of Lausanne has already some practices that help to reduce the UHI effect, like the roof vegetalisation of all the buildings that are public owned and the encouragement of private landlords to do the same by the bias of a recommendation guide for architects, a subvention program and by the fact that most of the town urban planning regulations and plans impose their creation. Note that even with its high urbanization Lausanne has a very nice quota of parks and gardens, even productive ones, and it aims to be the greenest city in Europe. [1]: https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14603131101736318.jpg [2]: https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14603134514096367.jpg