Evaluation of settlement textures in terms of building energy, economic performance, and outdoor thermal comfort

Settlement textures have continued to exist for many years without any major changes in terms of the performance of the buildings or outdoor thermal comfort conditions. Radical changes in a settlement texture are only possible when the existing texture is completely demolished and a new settlement texture is built in place of the old one during urban redevelopment processes. Therefore, a multi-scale approach evaluating building component scale, building scale, and settlement scale was developed in this study to design settlement textures based on environmental and climate data. This approach intended to evaluate the energy and economic performance of the reference residential building in different settlement texture alternatives and to determine the effects of settlement texture alternatives on outdoor thermal comfort conditions. Additionally, the goal was to evaluate the existing thermal properties of building envelope components to improve the energy and economic performance of the reference residential building as well as to evaluate the use of trees on streets to enhance existing outdoor thermal comfort. In this way, mistakes in the construction of settlement textures affecting many occupants could be prevented, and the development of sustainable urban neighbourhood designs with efficient buildings and settlements would be possible.