Tactical urban pocket parks (TUPPs) for subjective and objective multi-domain comfort enhancement

Cities face growing anthropogenic overheating phenomena, such as Urban Heat Island Effect and more intense and frequent heatwaves, impacting livability and wellbeing of local citizens and tourists. To mitigate such effects, passive mitigation strategies have been widely studied in the past decades, to be integrated within the built environment. The insertion of green areas, i.e. parks, in urban areas is among the most common passive strategies, however it presents numerous challenges, as traditional parks are difficult to insert in an existing packed urban texture. Hence, in this study, we examine the significance of strategic small urban parks related to various construction types. These parks can be seamlessly integrated through tactical urbanism interventions to enhance both the objective and subjective perception of overall comfort. By coupling human-centric microclimate monitoring campaigns in the small parks and surrounding blocks (objective analysis) with questionnaire surveys to parks’ users (subjective multidomain analysis) we aim at assessing their effectiveness. Results show that Tactical Urban Pocket Parks (TUPP) can slightly improve objective whole comfort and significantly enhance the improvement of subjective comfort (from neutral/bad to good/very good). •Tactical Urban Pocket Parks (TUPPs): Identified, offering diverse comfort dimensions.•Field Campaigns: Seamlessly combine subjective and objective data for comprehensive analysis.•TUPPs: Significantly enhance subjective comfort perception, transforming urban spaces.•Human-Centric Variability: Acknowledged as a key factor shaping comfort experiences.•TUPPs: Prioritize and excel in adapting to subjective comfort preferences.