Planning Support System Development for analysing environmental performance of form-based design decisions: Case Study of Enschede

Abstract. The environmental performance of urban neighbourhoods is a crucial indicator to measure the sustainability of the built urban form, especially as cities face increased urbanisation and densified development. With new construction contributing significantly to global carbon emissions, there is a need to understand how modifications in the urban form can affect its environmental performance at the scale of the neighbourhood. This research addresses this need by developing a Planning Support System workflow to aid decision-making in urban planning in order to analyse environmental performance, focusing on thermal comfort and solar energy potential. It explores the relationship between urban form and the selected environmental performance indicators while utilising freely available 3D geoinformation data of the Netherlands. It develops simplified workflows using established plug-ins and open-source 3D software that can be replicated by smaller municipalities with resource constraints, thus removing barriers to 3D-data based data-driven decision making for sustainable and informed urban planning.