Atmospheric Environment 44 (2010) 1894e1903

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Atmospheric Environment
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/atmosenv

City breathability and its link to pollutant concentration distribution

within urban-like geometries
Riccardo Buccolieri a, b, *, Mats Sandberg c, Silvana Di Sabatino b
a
Dipartimento di Informatica, Università “Ca' Foscari” di Venezia, Via Torino 155, 30172 Mestre, Italy
b
Dipartimento di Scienza dei Materiali, University of Salento, Via Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy
c
Division of Indoor Environment, Department of Technology and Built Environment, KTH Research School, University of Gävle, SE-80176 Gävle, Sweden

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper is devoted to the study of pollutant concentration distribution within urban-like geometries.
Received 10 August 2009 By applying efficiency concepts originally developed for indoor environments, the term ventilation is
Received in revised form used as a measure of city “breathability”. It can be applied to analyse pollutant removal within a city in
11 February 2010
operational contexts. This implies the evaluation of the bulk flow balance over the city and of the mean
Accepted 18 February 2010
age of air. The influence of building packing density on flow and pollutant removal is, therefore, eval-
uated using those quantities. Idealized cities of regular cubical buildings were created with packing
Keywords:
density ranging from 6.25% to 69% to represent configurations from urban sprawl to compact cities. The
City breathability
Mean age of air
relative simplicity of these arrangements allowed us to apply the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
Street canyons and building packing density flow and dispersion simulations using the standard ke3 turbulence model. Results show that city
Steady-state CFD simulations breathability within the urban canopy layer is strongly dependent from the building packing density. At
Urban air quality the lower packing densities, the city responds to the wind as an agglomeration of obstacles, at larger
densities (from about 44%) the city itself responds as a single obstacle. With the exception of the lowest
packing density, airflow enters the array through lateral sides and leaves throughout the street top and
flow out downstream. The air entering through lateral sides increases with increasing packing density.
At the street top of the windward side of compact building configurations, a large upward flow is
observed. This vertical transport reduces over short distance to turn into a downward flow further
downstream of the building array. These findings suggest a practical way of identifying city breathability.
Even though the application of these results to real scenarios require further analyses the paper illus-
trates a practical framework to be adopted in the assessment of the optimum neighbourhood building
layout to minimize pollution levels.
Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Urban air quality related issues are among the most critical
contemporary societal concerns, because they affect the quality of
life of large part of world population. Traffic emissions and
domestic heating commonly constitute the major sources of air
pollution in cities. Many researchers have studied the distribution
of pollutants within street canyons and densely built-up areas,
both experimentally and numerically using Computational Fluid
Dynamics (CFD) models (see Britter and Hanna, 2003 for a review;
Vardoulakis et al., 2003). Recent studies have analysed the role of
* Corresponding author at: Dipartimento di Scienza dei Materiali, University of
Salento, Via Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy. Tel.: þ39 0832 297 115; fax: þ39 0832
297 100.
E-mail address: riccardo.buccolieri@unisalento.it (R. Buccolieri).
urban street width and street building heights, wind direction and
velocity (e.g. Berkowicz et al., 2006; Di Sabatino et al., 2007a,b; Di
Sabatino et al., 2008; Soulhac et al., 2008), building roof geometry
(e.g. Huang et al., 2009), tree planting (e.g. Gromke et al., 2008;
Buccolieri et al., 2009), building packing density (e.g. Belcher
et al., 2003; Cheng et al., 2007; Blocken et al., 2008).
Additionally, street level concentration have been analysed
using the concept of exchange velocity between the urban canopy
layer and the region above (Bentham and Britter, 2003; Di Sabatino
et al., 2007b; Hamlyn and Britter, 2005). This concept, that is
defined by the average velocity of mass transfer into or out of the
urban canopy, is a surrogate variable for ventilation within the
urban canopy. It accounts for bulk vertical exchange of air mass but
does not account for other effects such as flow spatial variability.
Other ways could be explored to determine the pollutant dilu-
tion rate within an urban environment using building ventilation
concepts commonly applied to evaluate indoor exposure. In typical

1352-2310/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2010.02.022
 R. Buccolieri et al. / Atmospheric Environment 44 (2010) 1894e1903
engineering applications, building ventilation is the process of
exchange of indoor air with outdoor air. By this process pollutants
emitted indoors are diluted and removed, assuming that the
external air is clean. The dilution capacity is expressed by the
ventilation flow rate. If external air is polluted, it needs to be
filtered in order to reduce or avoid exposure inside to potentially
damaging large pollutant concentrations. However, knowledge of
external atmospheric conditions is the boundary conditions for any
building ventilation system. If building packing density is large,
there will be a reduction in pressure difference across buildings,
which limits the possibility to use natural ventilation for buildings
(Nishizawa et al., 2008).
In general, the dilution rate (removal rate), within a given
region, is the flux of pollutant leaving the region and never
returning again. However, flows in the indoor and outdoor envi-
ronments are characterized by recirculating flows. In such flows
pollutants come back to a given region several times, i.e. “visit”
(returning to) the region several times. The inability to draw
conclusions about the dilution for this type of velocity fields has led
to the development of concepts to estimate ventilation in indoor
environments (Etheridge and Sandberg, 1996). Those ventilation
concepts may be applied directly to measured pollutant concen-
trations in the final steady state within a given flow, regardless the
position of the sources and the physical mechanisms involved in
the pollutant mixing and removal. In fact, these concepts are based
on observed pollutant dilution and in principle can be applied to
complex flows with strong recirculation regions. Until now, these
concepts have been used for indoor building ventilation (see for
instance Kato et al., 2003; Huang et al., 2006; Niachou et al., 2008;
Sandberg et al., 2008; Chen, 2009).
The starting point of this paper is the assumption that the
ventilation processes outdoors and indoors can be described by
the same concepts. The physical fundamental processes involved
are the same: dilution, removal and recirculation of contaminants.
Obviously, the scale of the individual physical processes e.g.
turbulence and vertical transport, are different. Also boundaries
are different because external flows have open boundaries.
However, the definition of the concepts that quantify the efficiency
of the ventilation process does not depend on the scale of the
processes.
The concepts of indoor ventilation have only rarely been
applied to the urban environment (see for instance Bady et al.,
2008; Bu et al., 2009; Hang et al., 2009a,b) because of the objec-
tive difficulty of setting up the required boundary conditions for
the equations in the open urban atmosphere. Our intention is that
of finding a new integrated approach to evaluate both indoor and
outdoor urban air quality. In this framework, urban air quality is
analysed in terms of ventilation efficiency concepts as a measure
of city breathability, a term first introduced by Neophytou and
Britter (2005). Building on this, the aim of this paper is to set
a conceptual frame to interpret pollution concentration levels in
urban-like geometries using indoor ventilation concepts and CFD
numerical modelling typically required to predict flow and
dispersion in proximity of and within cluster of buildings. Several
regular cubical buildings were used to build up idealized cities,
varying from the scenario of urban sprawl to the opposite of
a compact city to evaluate the effect on pollutant dilution in
alternative urban planning strategies. Local mean age of air was
estimated by using the assumption of a homogeneous emission
rate within the domain. Section 2 revises indoor efficiency
concepts and explains how they can be applied to the urban
atmosphere. Section 3 describes the numerical approach including
models set-up and justification of all numerical assumption made.
Section 4 presents results and discussions. Conclusions are drawn
in Section 5.
1895
2. Ventilation efficiency and city breathability
The interaction between the atmospheric approaching flow and
a city results in complicated flow patterns between buildings, along
streets, stagnant zones and wake regions. Air mass approaching
a city can either enter the streets, flows above the buildings or
around it. Bulk flow over a given distribution of buildings deter-
mines its breathability, i.e. city potential of removing and diluting
pollutants, heat, moisture and other scalars. Due to the resistance
offered to the wind by buildings, flow through the city downstream
exits is lower than the flow entering the city upstream. It is known
that, in some cases, street networks have a specific flow capacity,
that is the flow rate along a street canyon will attain a constant
value or flow capacity (see Soulhac et al., 2008; Hang et al., 2010)
corresponding to a sort of minimum level of breathability. This
occurs when the shear stress, derived by the interaction between
the wind and the building top surfaces, is equal to the opposing
force, due to the friction against the surfaces of the street canyon.
At the windward side of a city, more air mass than the flow capacity
tries to penetrate into the city which generates a large flow in the
vertical direction. This observation is useful because it can be used
to evaluate pollutant removal from the inner core of the urban
canopy and the intrusion of clean air into the city.
In this paper, simulations over several cubical building array
configurations have been carried out. Starting from a low packing
density building configuration used as reference, the lot area has
been kept constant while the planar packing density has been
increased by adding new buildings to the reference configuration.
The overall planar area index lp, which for cubical buildings is equal
to the frontal area density lf (Grimmond and Oke, 1999) ranged
from 0.0625 (6.25%) to 0.69 (69%) as shown in Fig. 1. The model
building height H was equal to 0.07 m (scale 1:150).
First, we investigate the overall flow rate across the boundaries
(sides and street top). Then we analyse the distribution of the air
mass within the building arrays by predicting the local mean age of
air. It should be noted that the breathability of a city characterized
by a given building density depends both on the wind velocity and
direction. In this paper we apply concepts of flow rates and local
mean age of air for a given approaching flow. However, this
application can be extended to arrays with different packing
densities and for different approaching flow directions.
2.1. Flow rate
For a given flow approaching an urban area, the ventilation
consists of estimating the amount of flow that leaves the urban
array. This can be quantified by means of CFD simulations and by
simply applying a mass flow balance in a given control volume. The
flow rate through the street opening is defined as:
Z
! !
q ¼ V $ n dA (1)
A
! *
where V is the velocity vector, n is the normal direction to street
openings and A is the area of the street entry. The vertical flow rate
through the top is expressed in a similar way. We normalized the
flow rate by the reference flow rate far upstream (qref) as given below:
R! !
V $ n dA
q
q* ¼ ¼ R A! ! (2)
qref u ref $ n dA
A
! !
where u ref $ n is the velocity far upstream of the building array
through the area A: it coincides with the wind velocity in the
x-direction.
1896 R. Buccolieri et al. / Atmospheric Environment 44 (2010) 1894e1903
Fig. 1. Diagram showing increasing building packing density of the urban-like geometries investigated. The wind blows from the left along the x-direction.
To estimate local variations of q* within the building array,
the street top level was subdivided into 7 smaller areas by dis-
tinguishing those close to the edge of the building array from the
others in the middle of the building array. Diagram in Fig. 2 shows
those areas.
2.2. Local mean age of air
To assess the ventilation efficiency performance of each case
investigated, we also estimated the local mean age of air. We used
the homogeneous emission rate method (Hang et al., 2009b), which
implies that pollutants have been generated at the same emission
rate at each location within the flow domain. The adoption of the
homogeneous emission rate method coincides with one of the
worst scenarios within an urban environment, because it means
assuming that pollutant generation occurs everywhere.
The concept of local mean age of air was originally developed for
indoor applications, for which system boundaries are closed, with
the exception of small supply and extract points. Therefore, when
an air parcel leaves the system, it never returns to it. A practical
measuring technique for determining the local mean age of air,
based on the homogeneous emission technique, has been realized
by using a passive tracer gas technique (Etheridge and Sandberg,
1996). The effect of recirculation of air on the age of air in venti-
lated rooms is discussed in Waters and Simons (2000).
In urban areas, control volumes have open boundaries, which
implies that a pollutant generated inside the control volume may
Fig. 2. Definition of the discretisation of the street top level into edge and middle type
areas. Those individual areas are used to calculate normalized vertical flow rates.
return to it. Turbulence introduces upward and downward vertical
fluxes through the street tops. The downward flux implies that
some air parcels re-enter the volume below, i.e. visiting this volume
at least twice.
In practical applications of the homogeneous emission method,
the emission rate at location P is assumed to be proportional to the
local control volume surrounding this location. Given the effective
uniformly distributed emission rate QU, and the corresponding
tracer concentration field, the local mean age of airsP , at a given
location P, can be estimated from the local concentration cP as
(Etheridge and Sandberg, 1996):
cP
sP ¼ : (3)
QU
Alternatively, the local mean age of air can also be determined
by a transient technique, by starting from a uniform initial
concentration c(0) and calculating the integrated concentration at
location P. In this case the equation corresponding to Eq. (3)
becomes (Etheridge and Sandberg, 1996):
RN
cp dt
sP ¼ 0
: (4)
cð0Þ
Mathematically Eqs. (3) and (4) are the same as they can be
derived from each other using the Duhamel's principle (Sneddon,
2006) applied to partial differential equations (which in this case
is the transport equation for a passive contaminant). The Duhamel's
principle says that the solution of the inhomogeneous transport
equation (source term which in our case is the emission rate QU) is
the same as the solution the homogeneous equation (i.e. equal to
equation with no source term). The homogeneous transport
equation is solved with the concentration c(0) as initial condition.
Then the concentration field c(x) obtained from solving the inho-
mogeneous equation with source term QU is the same as the
concentration field obtained from solving the homogeneous
equation with initial condition c(0). It follows that the requirements
on the source term QU is the same as on the initial condition c(0).
In Eqs. (3) and (4) the source term (or the initial concentration)
appears at the denominator and therefore only acts to normalize the
expression. Therefore one can, for different cities, equally insert
different values of initial concentration or emission rate. The impor-
tant constraint is that for the same city both the initial concentration
and the emission rate should be constant within the city domain.
In general terms, Eq. (3) can be interpreted as the link between
a concentration level to a time scale. If this time scale is known,
pollutant concentration from a homogeneous emission rate can be
estimated. A poorly ventilated region implies a large sP , i.e. air mass
takes a long time to reach a given region and therefore pollutant
removal will be slower. This, in turn, means an accumulation of
pollutants in the region and larger concentration.
 R. Buccolieri et al. / Atmospheric Environment 44 (2010) 1894e1903
By applying Eq. (3) to an urban building array, more properly to
the volume between the building array, we just estimate the net
transport across boundaries. In those situations, Hang et al. (2009b)
suggested to name the time scale sP (Eq. (3)) as the effective local
mean age of air, which is different from the time that pollutants
spend within the building array volume, as in the original sense.
When pollutants return across open boundaries, the effective age
increases and therefore it reflects the actual contamination situa-
tion within the building array.
For the purpose of this work, a uniform volume source of
pollutant (QU) was defined over all gaps within the urban building
array, from the ground to the street top. The age of air was
normalized using only a portion of the overall gaps volume as
follows:
s*P ¼ sP qref =VOL
where VOL is the volume of the gaps within the building array from
the ground to the pedestrian level, that in our cases corresponds to
w0.16H (w1.7 m in full scale) and it is at the sixth cell above the
ground, in accordance with Tominaga et al. (2008).
We argue that the local mean age of air is a useful indirect way to
quantify the breathability of a city. Local mean age of air, estimated
for a given city and specific meteorological conditions, can be
reported into spatial maps in order to evaluate city breathability
and pollutant removal potential, as discussed in Section 4.3.
3. CFD modelling set-up
3D steady-state, incompressible and isothermal, CFD simula-
tions were performed by means of the general purpose code
FLUENT (2006). FLUENT solves the integral equations for the
conservation of mass and momentum, and, when appropriate,
energy and other scalars including chemical species. Turbulence
can be modelled using several models, including the standard ke3
model and its variants, RNG and realizable, as well as a second-
moment closure or Reynolds-stress model (RSM).
3.1. Computational domain and mesh size
The computational domain was built using hexahedral elements
(wtwo millions and half in our cases), with a finer resolution within
the entire building area (the expansion rate between two consec-
utive cells was below 1.3). The influence on the predictions of the
choice of mesh size, using several refined meshes, was verified until
difference in flow rates of no more than 5% was achieved. The
smallest dimensions of the elements of the finer mesh were
dxmin ¼ dymin ¼ 0.06H and dzmin ¼ 0.03H, which refer to the size
Fig. 3. Schematic sketch of geometry and boundary conditions used in CFD simulations.
1897
of the smallest grid spacing in the x, y and z directions, respectively.
Because main interests in this paper are mean differences in flow
rates and mean age of air when increasing the building packing
density, the above mesh was considered sufficient for the purpose
of the present study.
The definition of the computational domain size shown in Fig. 3
and mesh resolution fulfils the major simulation requirements as
recently recommended by COST Action 732 (2005e2009) and by
the Working Group of the Architectural Institute of Japan (AIJ)
(Tominaga et al., 2008).
3.2. Flow and dispersion model set-up
The standard ke3 model (Launder and Spalding, 1974) was used.
Dispersion calculations were carried out using the advec-
(5) tionediffusion module. In turbulent flows, FLUENT computes the
mass diffusion as follows:
 
m
J ¼  rD þ t VY (6)
Sct
where D is the molecular diffusion coefficient for the pollutant in
the mixture, mt ¼ r(Cmk2/3) is the turbulent viscosity, Y is the mass
fraction of the pollutant and r is the mixture density. Sct ¼ mt/(rDt) is
the turbulent Schmidt number, where Dt is the turbulent diffusivity
coefficient. To account for the underestimation of the turbulent
diffusion a turbulent Schmidt number equal to 0.4 was chosen
(Di Sabatino et al., 2007a,b; Tominaga and Stathopoulos, 2007).
Nitrous oxide (N2O) was used as a tracer gas with an emission
rate QU  VOLTOT ¼ 10 g s1 , where VOLTOT is the volume of the
gaps within the building array, from the ground to the street top.
It is known that the standard ke3 model is not able to reproduce
the separation and reverse flow at the roof top of a building, due
to its overestimation of turbulence energy at the impinging region
of the building wall. However, it has been widely used to study
flow and dispersion over regular building arrays (e.g. Wang and
McNamara, 2006; Milliez and Carissimo, 2007; Santiago et al., 2007).
In general, the use of CFD techniques is not a mere application of
standard procedures, but needs to be evaluated. The CFD modelling
applied here is based on the procedure set-up used in our previous
modelling exercises (e.g. Di Sabatino et al., 2007a,b; Di Sabatino
et al., 2008; Schatzmann et al., 2009). Specifically Di Sabatino
et al. (2007a) validated FLUENT simulations within different
building arrangements of building packing densities with lp and lf
ranging from 0.045 to 0.31, similar to those used in this paper, using
data from wind tunnel experiments available from the CEDVAL data
sets (2002). The comparison showed that the ke3 model can be
used for such configurations and that there is a good agreement in
1898 R. Buccolieri et al. / Atmospheric Environment 44 (2010) 1894e1903
terms of the essential features of the mean flow, such as the shape
and the dimension of the vortexes and velocity profiles.
Other modelling exercises were performed within the European
project COST Action 732, namely the Mock Urban Setting Test
(MUST) and OKLAHOMA exercises (Schatzmann et al., 2009). The
MUST experiment set-up is also somehow similar to the building
configurations investigated in this study. Various CFD codes, mainly
using the ke3 turbulence model (http://www.dmu.dk/International/
Air/Models/Background/MUST.htm), were used to simulate flow and
dispersion in that urban-like geometry and evaluated using wind
tunnel data from Hamburg University. Mean flow and concentration
model results compared relatively well with measurements. We
expect that the accuracy of results presented here is of the same
order of that achieved within the COST 732 MUST modelling
exercise. As an example, we report our MUST simulation results for
the statistical index hit rate test (VDI, 2005) which expresses the
fraction of model results which differs within an allowed range
from the experimental data, using a fractional deviation D ¼ 0.25
and an absolute deviation W ¼ 0.003. VDI guidelines establish that
the hit rate must not fall below 0.66 for the model results
comparison with wind tunnel data. For the x-velocity the hit rate
was between 0.73 and 0.89, for the turbulent kinetic energy
between 0.32 and 0.78 while it was 0.74 for the concentration
(Schatzmann et al., 2009).
Furthermore, we performed some additional tests using the
RSM turbulence model available in FLUENT which has been proven
to perform better in urban flows even though is computationally
more expensive (Hamlyn and Britter, 2005). Overall, flow rates
values differed from those using the ke3 model within 10% and the
overall behaviour of the flow patterns was the same as the one
obtained with the ke3 model. Given results from the validation
tests and the relative simplicity of the geometries investigated here,
we judged that the application of the ke3 model was acceptable for
the purpose of our research.
3.3. Boundary conditions and numerical approximations
The inlet wind speed was assumed to follow a power law
profile:
UðzÞ  z a
¼ (7)
UH H
Fig. 4. Flow rates, normalized by the reference flow rate far upstream, for all the arrays investigated. The flow rate is positive for air entering the array.
where UH ¼ 1.656 m s1 is the undisturbed wind velocity at the
building height H and a ¼ 0.35. Turbulent kinetic energy and
dissipation rate profiles were specified as follows:
u2*  z
k ¼ pffiffiffiffiffi
ffi 1 (8)
Cm d
u3*  z
3¼ 1 (9)
kz d
where d ¼ 0.77 m is the boundary layer depth, u* ¼ 0.19 m s1 is the
friction velocity, k the von Kàrmàn constant (0.40) and Cm ¼ 0.09.
Symmetry boundary conditions, required to enforce a parallel flow,
were specified on the top and lateral sides of the domain. At the
boundary downwind of the obstacles an outflow boundary condi-
tion was used to reach a fully developed flow (Fig. 3). No-slip wall
boundary conditions were used at all solid surfaces. The second
order discretisation scheme was used for pressure and second
order upwinding discretisation schemes (Barth and Jespersen,
1989) were used for momentum, k, 3 and the scalar to increase
the accuracy and reduce numerical diffusion. The SIMPLE scheme
was used for the pressureevelocity coupling. Simulations were run
until the residuals became constant. Overall, the residual for the
continuity equation was always equal or below 2 O 3e-05, while
residuals for the velocity components, k and 3 were, in most cases,
below 1e-06 and for the scalar below 2 O 3e-06.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Flow rates
In the first step, flow rates at street openings and street top are
analysed. Fig. 4 illustrates the detailed building geometries used in
the study, as well as the normalized flow rates q* . The flow rate has
been defined positive for air entering the array, while it has been
defined negative for air leaving the array. The total positive flow
rates (inflow) must be equal to the total negative flow rates (i.e.
outflow).
Fig. 4 shows that the flow enters the array from side streets
(positive flow rates) in all cases with the exception of the lowest
packing density case (lp ¼ 0.0625). Overall, more air is transported
into the array from the sides and leaves through the street top as
 R. Buccolieri et al. / Atmospheric Environment 44 (2010) 1894e1903 1899

Fig. 5. Vertical flow rates and vertical velocities through several regions of the street top evaluated in the middle (a and b, respectively) and at the edge (c and d, respectively) of
each array (see Fig. 2 for positions).

the packing density increases up to lp ¼ 0.56. The lp ¼ 0.69 case is
indeed characterized by a vertical outflow lower than that occur-
ring in the packing density lp ¼ 0.56.
A more detailed difference in flow patterns can be recognized
by looking at Fig. 5, which shows normalized flow rates and
normalized vertical velocities w/UH through several regions of the
street top in the middle and at the edge of each array. When
referring to “middle” and “edge” of the array, we reiterate that the
x, y dimensions and positions of the above regions are those
shown in Fig. 2. We note that each case experiences an upward
flow, i.e. negative flow rates, at the beginning of the array. This is
due to the resistance provided by the first row of buildings. In
most cases, at the downstream end of the array, there is a down-
ward flow due to lower resistance; therefore the flow along the
street increases and air is transported downwards to “fill up” the
street with more air.
In the largest packing density case (lp ¼ 0.69), considerable
large positive flow rates (air flowing downward) are visible at the
downstream end, with air entering through the top at a distance x/
H w 1. This behaviour occurs at the edge of the array for the
lp ¼ 0.56 and lp ¼ 0.44 cases as well (Fig. 5c, d). Looking at
the horizontal flow rates in Fig. 6, we note that in the lp ¼ 0.69 case
the flow is opposite to the wind direction at the centre of the array.
The reversed flow is due to a recirculation bubble, as shown in
Fig. 7. From the ventilation perspective, a recirculation bubble is
a stagnation zone, and it is a response resulting in the change
from an upward flow to a downward flow over a short distance
corresponding to lower vertical velocities in that region (Fig. 5b, d).
Overall, two types of vertical recirculation zones can be identi-
fied from Fig. 7: weak and strong. Weak recirculation zones in the
lp ¼ 0.44 and lp ¼ 0.56 do not change the direction of the flow
obtained by integrating the velocity field from the ground up to the
building height, as shown in the horizontal flow rates plots in Fig. 6.
Weak recirculation zones are those where the normalized hori-
zontal flow rate is positive. Strong recirculation zones are found in
the lp ¼ 0.69 case where an evident change in flow direction is
present. This has a strong influence on the local pollutant transport
and on the local mean age of air as discussed in Section 4.2.
Following the above results and looking at the vectors of
normalized velocity magnitude U/UH at z ¼ 0.5H shown in Fig. 8,
three scenarios can be recognized: sparse, compact and very
compact city.
- The sparse city, corresponding to lp ¼ 0.0625, 0.11 and 0.25
cases, acts as a collection of obstacles, where reversed flow only
occurs behind the buildings.

Fig. 6. Horizontal flow rates through several regions in the middle and at the edge of each array.
1900 R. Buccolieri et al. / Atmospheric Environment 44 (2010) 1894e1903
Fig. 7. Vectors of normalized velocity magnitude U/UH in the middle and at the edge
for the lp ¼ 0.56 and lp ¼ 0.69 cases.
- The compact city, corresponding to lp ¼ 0.44 and 0.56 cases,
behaves as a unique obstacle with respect to the flow. A
single wake, whose size scales with the horizontal dimension
of the city, forms behind the building array. Even though
a reversed flow bubble is present within the building domain,
the horizontal flow rate is positive i.e. aligned with the wind
direction.
Fig. 8. Vectors of normalized velocity magnitude U/UH at z ¼ 0.5H.
- The very compact city, corresponding to lp ¼ 0.69, shows the
presence of a strong reversed flow bubble. The horizontal
flow rate is negative i.e. opposite to the approaching wind
direction.
Focusing on the most compact configuration case, it appears
that the horizontal flow rate does not reach a constant value farther
downstream of the array. Different results were shown by Soulhac
et al. (2008), who found that the flow rate reached an asymptotic
value farther downstream in building configurations made of long
street canyons with no openings, therefore the results are not
necessarily conflicting in nature.
4.2. Local mean age of air
The normalized mean age of air at pedestrian level (w1.7 m in
full scale) is shown in Fig. 9. Overall, we note that the mean age of
air is large in poorly ventilated recirculation zones (Fig. 8) and in
downstream regions. The air becomes older in the downstream
region of the array as the building packing density increases.
Pollutants tend to accumulate in the downstream region along the
streets, as a result of the pollutant transport from the street sides in
this region and the low vertical air mass through the street top. As
suggested from flow rates discussed in the previous section, local
mean age of air is low near the side openings where lower
concentrations are found.
Fig. 9 shows that the mean age of air is larger close to the middle
of the array for all cases investigated. Moreover, it increases as
building packing density increases, and this occurs both in the
middle and at the edge of the array. However, some differences can
be observed. In general, it can be argued that the mean age of air
increases downstream in the three lowest configurations
(lp ¼ 0.0625, 0.11, 0.25), while for the most compact cases
(lp ¼ 0.44, 0.56, 0.69), it reaches a maximum and then decreases
 R. Buccolieri et al. / Atmospheric Environment 44 (2010) 1894e1903 1901

Fig. 9. Normalized mean age of air at pedestrian level for three arrays investigated.

close to the end of the array. This maximum value occurs at lower in sensitive areas. Starting from maps of the local mean age of air
distance downstream as the packing density increases. for a given packing density, a fast assessment of mean high pollu-
It should also be noted that in the middle of the array, maximum tion spots can be inferred. This can be useful in those cases where
values are found for the lp ¼ 0.56 configuration ðs*P ðmaxÞw21Þ and the legislation imposes limits for the mean value of a specific
not for the lp ¼ 0.69 case ðs*P ðmaxÞw14Þ. This can be explained by pollutant. By estimating an average emission rate (memiss) for
looking at the size of the recirculation zones shown in Fig. 7. In fact, a given building arrangement and by assuming that the average
the recirculation zone in the lp ¼ 0.69 case extends over most of the emission rate is released uniformly, concentrations in the urban
building array length. In this zone, pollutants are well mixed and environments can be estimated as follows:
the local mean age of air is almost constant, as shown in Fig. 9. On
the other hand, the lp ¼ 0.56 case is characterized by the presence c* ¼ sP memiss (10)
of smaller recirculation zones, with lower flow velocities. Within
Results from Eq. (10) can be used to verify whether mean values
regions of larger pollutant accumulations, the local mean age of air
are exceeded at a specific position, or within sensitive areas, both
is found to be larger.
indoors and outdoors. If c* is larger than the maximal allowable
Locations of the recirculation zones and of the maximum values
mean concentration (Climit), one should consider alternative
of the local mean age of air are summarized in Table 1. The
building packing density to improve the city breathability. With c*
maximum value is found in the centre of the strong recirculation
zone in the middle of the lp ¼ 0.69 array (as shown in Figs. 6 and 7).
In the lp ¼ 0.56 case, the presence of weaker recirculation zones
Table 1
does not significantly affect the main flow and maximum values of
Locations of recirculation zones and maximum values of the normalized mean age of
the mean age of air are found at the beginning of the first recir- air in the middle of the arrays.
culation zone.
Planar area Location of Location of the Maximum value
index lp recirculation maximum values of the normalized
4.3. Example of urban planning using the mean age of air zones of the mean age of air mean age of air
0.56 1 < x/H < 5 x/H w 1 and x/H w 2 w21
The concepts shown above could be used in practice by applying (several, weak zones)
a rather simple approach to identify the most suitable building 0.69 3 < x/H < 4 3 < x/H < 2 w14
(one, strong zone) (constant value)
arrangement which may improve ventilation and reduce pollution
1902 R. Buccolieri et al. / Atmospheric Environment 44 (2010) 1894e1903
lower than Climit, the concern might be about the health effects on
living beings, caused by the long term exposure to high pollutant
levels. The exposure of a concentration is the integration of the
concentration during the time of the exposure. People inhale
pollutants by breathing at a rate qB and the intake is the exposure
multiplied by the breathing rate. People spend their time both
indoors and outdoors or are in transit. The total intake for a given
period is obtained as follows:
 
Total intake ¼ qB toutdoor c* þ tindoor cindoor (11)
where tindoor and toutdoor are the time people spend indoors and
outdoors, respectively, and cindoor is the indoor concentration. The
total intake expresses the dose which organs or tissues are exposed
to. Examples of concentration in different environments and esti-
mates of the total exposure can be found in Meyer (1983).
If the intake of the ventilation air to the building is not treated,
the indoor concentration will be the same as the outdoor
concentration. Due to the long time spent indoors this may not be
acceptable. Then one can filter the intake of outdoor to lower the
indoor concentration below the outdoor concentration which, in
turn, implies a lower intake.
The above example shows that maps shown in the previous
sections can be used to derive multiple kinds of information about:
 overall outdoor ventilation i.e. breathability of a given city or
neighbourhood;
 concentration levels from a “worst case” scenario, with
pollutants released everywhere;
 areas where there is likelihood that allowable mean concen-
trations are exceeded;
 areas where it is necessary to filtrate the intake of air to reduce
exposure.
5. Summary and conclusions
Ventilation efficiency concepts commonly used for indoor
environments were applied to analyse ventilation, as a measure of
city breathability and pollutant dilution within several urban-like
geometries. The analysis started with determining the bulk flow
balance by calculating flow rates by means of RANS CFD
simulations. The distribution of pollutant concentration within
building arrays was then quantified by estimating the local mean
age of air using of the homogeneous emission rate method.
Flow rates analyses suggested a way to classify city's neigh-
bourhoods into three groups: sparse, compact and very compact
cities. While a sparse city is composed of a collection of obstacles,
where reversed flow only occurs behind the buildings, a compact
city behaves as a unique obstacle, and it is characterized by weak
recirculation zones within the building domain, which, however,
do not affect the direction of the bulk flow. A very compact city
shows strong recirculation zones within the domain, and the
horizontal flow rate is opposite to the approaching wind direction.
In correspondence of recirculation zones within more compact
cities, large values of the local mean age of air were found.
However, while strong recirculation zones size extended over most
of the array length, weak recirculation zones were smaller and
characterized by lower wind velocities. This implied larger
pollutant accumulation and the local mean age of air was found to
be maximum.
Even though specific results should be re-considered for real
cities for which RANS models may fail, possibly using LES type
models, we found that the local mean age of air concept is useful to
quantify city breathability. Based on this, we proposed a simple but
practical approach to improve ventilation and reduce pollutant
accumulation zones in sensitive areas. This is the first attempt to
build a unified approach for the assessment of air quality of the
total indoor and outdoor environment.
Acknowledgements
Authors would like to thank Dr. Jian Hang from the Hong Kong
University for useful discussions on the local mean age of air.
Thanks also go to two anonymous referees who provided several
suggestions to improve the paper.
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