Urban growth and development caused by urbanization influence the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon. With the rapid development of urbanization, China's major cities are facing more serious climate change problems, especially the UHI phenomenon. Proper planning and urban design of compact cities may improve the ventilation of street canyons and change the heat balance in the urban canopy and thus mitigate the UHI phenomenon. The aim of this study is to evaluate and discuss the mitigation of UHI with different types of land-use and land-cover (LUCC), as well as different development patterns for compact cities. To this end, we applied the weather research and forecasting model (WRF) with urban canopy model (WRF/UCM) in this study. To evaluate the impact of LUCC changes on the UHI, we set 2 cases based on land use and land cover statistical data from 1965 and 2008 of Wuhan. Also, to evaluate the impact of urban morphology changes on the UHI, we designed 2 hypothetical cases based on 2 different urban developing patterns, one is high rise case and another is high density case, to simulate the impact of urban morphology on the UHI. As for the results of this study, with different LUCC of 1965 and 2008, UHI intensity of Wuhan increased by 0.2 °C–0.4 °C in average. Moreover, the critical wind speed which can mitigate UHI of case 1965 is much lower than case 2008. With different urban morphology, the high-rise case may lead to lower UHI intensity at the pedestrian level due to the shading effects of high-rise buildings. However, the critical value of wind speed in the high-rise case was almost 1.5–2 times greater than that of the high-density case, which illustrates the reduced possibility of mitigating the UHI phenomenon for high-rise buildings in Wuhan City. Display omitted •When the lake area decreased by 130 km2 in the built-up area of Wuhan, UHI intensity increased by 0.2 °C–0.4 °C.•When the lake area decreased by 130 km2, the critical value of wind speed needed to mitigate the UHI doubled at 04:00.•Air temperature differences between these two development patterns can reach 1 °C and that at 12:00 and 17:00, respectively.•The critical values of wind speed in the high-density case were 1.5 and 2 times higher than those of the high-rise case.•The T2 in the high-density case was 0.5 ºC higher, however, wind speed of high-rise case was 70% of high-density case.