ABSTRACT
Industrialization processes have promoted economic development at the cost of climate change and heat hazards. Urban parks are effective nature-based cooling strategies, but may also bring about climate gentrification. Our study explored climate gentrification along with park cooling performance based on land surface temperature retrieved from satellite images and housing prices in Liuzhou, one of China's tropical industrial cities. We found that urban parks were with average cooling distance of 166.17 ± 11.69 m, cooling intensity of 2.85 ± 0.28 °C, covering about five times park area. The cooling lapse was 3.97 ± 0.40 °C/km. The climate gentrification was related to different accessibility to park cooling area. Residents in the urban center had better access to park cooling range than those outside the second ring road. Housing prices went up near cooling range of urban parks. To abate climate gentrification, measures should be taken, such as improving parks' cooling performance and building affordable houses. This study has significant implications for quality, efficiency and equity of park construction, and also provides suggestions for urban heat mitigation and sustainable urban development.
