Remote sensing of the surface urban heat island and land architecture in Phoenix, Arizona: Combined effects of land composition and configuration and cadastral–demographic–economic factors

This study seeks to determine the role of land architecture—the composition and configuration of land cover—as well as cadastral–demographic–economic factors on land surface temperature (LST) and the surface urban heat island effect of Phoenix, Arizona. It employs 1m National Agricultural Imagery Program data of land-cover with 120m Landsat-derived land surface temperature, decomposed to 30m, a new measure of configuration, the normalized moment of inertia, and U.S. Census data to address the question for two randomly selected samples comprising 523 and 545 residential neighborhoods (census blocks) in the city. The results indicate that, contrary to most other studies, land configuration has a stronger influence on LST than land composition. In addition, both land configuration and architecture combined with cadastral, demographic, and economic variables, capture a significant amount of explained variance in LST. The results indicate that attention to land architecture in the development of or reshaping of neighborhoods may ameliorate the summer extremes in LST. •Land-cover composition and configuration of neighborhoods affects the urban heat island.•Land-cover configuration is as important as composition on land surface temperature.•Land architecture and socio-economic factors correlate strongly with land surface temperature.•Land architecture of neighborhoods offers a means to ameliorate the extremes urban heat islands.