In 1996, French climatologists Denis Lamarre and Pierre Pagney proposed the notion of "climatic potential" to define the way in which a society, at a given moment, represents the constraints and resources of a climate. This notion encompasses what is possible and impossible to do in a given climate at a given time.
This article shows that this notion of "climatic potential", somewhat forgotten today, has many practical implications by taking the case of urban cooling and the fight against the UHI phenomenon. The analysis of the climate potential at the regional and local scale is presented as a way to overcome the difficulties posed by the current climate change in the fields of architecture and urban planning.