Abstract
Urban heat islands (UHIs) pose a growing threat to urban environments, particularly in temperate and subtropical cities that are increasingly exposed to intensifying heat-wave conditions under climate change. This phenomenon worsens air quality, increases energy demand, and raises public health concerns, particularly in highly populated areas. Biophilic design, which integrates natural elements into the built environment, offers a sustainable strategy for mitigating UHIs effects and enhancing thermal comfort. This study evaluates the resilience of biophilic design solutions by integrating Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) into a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) framework. Expert-based weighting and a 1–4 performance scale were applied to assess the resilience of each strategy. Two widely recognized urban regeneration initiatives. The Goods Line (Sydney) and The High Line (New York) were evaluated to identify transferable solutions in six areas: Traffic Planning, Energy Management, Stormwater Management, Biodiversity Management, Urban Furniture Design, and Community Awareness and Activities. The results demonstrate that planning-oriented and community-based strategies maintain the strongest resilience, with one of the individual solutions contributing up to ~9% of the total relative performance score under RCP 8.5, while vegetation-based solutions show modest performance losses due to vulnerability to intense heat. The findings demonstrate how scenario-based evaluation strengthens the resilience of urban design decisions and ensures adaptability under future warming. By explicitly linking design evaluation to climate-change scenarios, this study provides a transferable decision-support framework for climate-responsive urban planning in temperate and subtropical cities facing escalating heat-wave risks.