Evaluating Buildings’ Green Retrofitting to Improve Urban Environment at District Level

In the context of sustainable cities and communities, to meet the European aim of a carbon-free economy by 2050, and to tackle the current climate change, the retrofitting of the Italian residential building stock, as well the green regeneration of urban districts, is essential. The research aims at assessing the influence of some cooling strategies applied in a defined hypothetical but realistic urban grid located in Florence, evaluating multistorey and tower building types, respectively. Using ENVI-met software, several micro-climate parameters were evaluated. The most significant outcomes were related to the substitution of the current dark asphalt (reference case) with cool pavements as an improvement strategy. This measure resulted in an average reduction of external air temperature equal to 1.5 °C. Otherwise, the application of green façade technology on buildings noticeably influenced both the wall surface temperature (reduction of around 12 °C) and the wall energy balance (reduction of about 60 W/m2) with respect to traditional external wall configurations.