The serious environmental challenges that the human settlements are faced with, such
as climate change, resource crisis, greenhouse gas emissions and water crisis are necessitated changing
the perspectives and adopting the adaptive policies of guiding and controlling the human settlements
towards responsiveness of the above challenges. Accordingly, the present research aims at investigating
the effective aspects of urban form on environmental performances while focusing on urban openness
as one of the important general factors of built form. The methodological framework of the research
has been founded on the analytical-comparative studies of the impacts of urban form on the theoretical
energy demands according to the specific morphological units in the general morphological context of
the Isfahan. On this basis, five tissue types (morphological units) have been selected arising from urban
morphological approaches and methods as the comparative and analytical basis of the study. The results
and findings demonstrate that there is a strong and significant correlation between energy demands and
urban openness in general while the two classes of measures in terms of levels of complexity are classified
as the analytical basis of the research. Results demonstrate that geometrical and configurational aspects
of urban form are in compliance with the climatic conditions in environmental performances studies.
Finally, indicating the paradoxical behaviors of heating energy demands in cold seasons and cooling
energy demands in hot seasons especially in the case of hot and arid climate conditions in relation with
urban morphological characteristics (focusing on urban openness factor) has been considered as the most
important achievement of this research.