How Urban Structure Can Affect City Sustainability in Terms of Air Quality

Despite the progress made in controlling air pollution in special places, urban areas are witnessing increasing environmental concerns for air pollution. Air quality is one of the major concerns in this area. The results of several studies in this regard indicate that the shape of the city and land use distribution determine the location of pollution sources and urban traffic patterns and affect the air quality of the city. In this paper, the potential effects of different land use patterns on the quality of the city's air are studied. Based on this, three hypothetical cities are considered based on each urban planning strategy, and with taking different land use patterns into account: from designing a large city, to a densely populated city with mixed land use. The MEMO / MARS average scale photochemical system has also been used to evaluate the air quality in each of the city's desirable structures. The results of this simulation show that densely populated cities with mixed land use have better air quality compared to distributed and networked cities.