Urban designs that consider regional climatic conditions are one of the most important approaches for developing smart cities. In cities that suffer from heavy snow and cold winds in winter (winter cities), an urban design approach different than that used for warm cities should be used.

This study presents a scientific design process that incorporates environmental and energy assessments that use snow CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations to establish guidelines for the design of smart cities so that the impact of snow and wind and the energy consumptions in the buildings can be minimized in these cities.

Our previous studies used city blocks in downtown Sapporo, Japan, as case studies, and we evaluated the conceptual models for how they impacted the snow and wind conditions in the blocks as well as the snow removal energy with snow simulation using a wind tunnel. Based on the results, we were able to identify the design guidelines for urban blocks in downtown Sapporo. However, these methods have two limitations; 1) It is difficult to study more various concept models because the model production for the snow simulation using wind tunnel takes a lot of time. 2) The area of simulation is limited by the size of wind tunnel. This study presents a new urban design approach for smart city planning in winter cities with snow CFD simulation that can overcome the above limitations.