On the assessment of surface urban heat island : size urban form and seasonality To what extent cities can be made sustainable under the mega trends of urbanization and climate change remains a matter of unresolved scientific debate. Our inability in answering this question lies partly in the deficient knowledge regarding pivotal humanenvironment interactions. Regarded as the most well documented anthropogenic climate modification the urban heat island (UHI) effect – the warmth of urban areas relative to the rural hinterland – has raised great public health concerns globally. Worse still heat waves are being observed and are projected to increase in both frequency and intensity which further impairs the well being of urban dwellers. Albeit with a substantial increase in the number of publications on UHI in the recent decades the diverse urban rural definitions applied in previous studies have remarkably hampered the general comparability of results achieved. In addition few studies have attempted to synergize the land use data and thermal remote sensing to systematically assess UHI and its contributing…