#green spaces

[reasonsforhope]

"With “green corridors” that mimic the natural forest, the Colombian city is driving down temperatures — and could become five degrees cooler over the next few decades.

In the face of a rapidly heating planet, the City of Eternal Spring — nicknamed so thanks to its year-round temperate climate — has found a way to keep its cool.

Previously, Medellín had undergone years of rapid urban expansion, which led to a severe urban heat island effect — raising temperatures in the city to significantly higher than in the surrounding suburban and rural areas. Roads and other concrete infrastructure absorb and maintain the sun’s heat for much longer than green infrastructure.

“Medellín grew at the expense of green spaces and vegetation,” says Pilar Vargas, a forest engineer working for City Hall. “We built and built and built. There wasn’t a lot of thought about the impact on the climate. It became obvious that had to change.”

Efforts began in 2016 under Medellín’s then mayor, Federico Gutiérrez (who, after completing one term in 2019, was re-elected at the end of 2023). The city launched a new approach to its urban development — one that focused on people and plants.

The $16.3 million initiative led to the creation of 30 Green Corridors along the city’s roads and waterways, improving or producing more than 70 hectares of green space, which includes 20 kilometers of shaded routes with cycle lanes and pedestrian paths.

These plant and tree-filled spaces — which connect all sorts of green areas such as the curb strips, squares, parks, vertical gardens, sidewalks, and even some of the seven hills that surround the city — produce fresh, cooling air in the face of urban heat. The corridors are also designed to mimic a natural forest with levels of low, medium and high plants, including native and tropical plants, bamboo grasses and palm trees.

Heat-trapping infrastructure like metro stations and bridges has also been greened as part of the project and government buildings have been adorned with green roofs and vertical gardens to beat the heat. The first of those was installed at Medellín’s City Hall, where nearly 100,000 plants and 12 species span the 1,810 square meter surface.

“It’s like urban acupuncture,” says Paula Zapata, advisor for Medellín at C40 Cities, a global network of about 100 of the world’s leading mayors. “The city is making these small interventions that together act to make a big impact.”

At the launch of the project, 120,000 individual plants and 12,500 trees were added to roads and parks across the city. By 2021, the figure had reached 2.5 million plants and 880,000 trees. Each has been carefully chosen to maximize their impact.

“The technical team thought a lot about the species used. They selected endemic ones that have a functional use,” explains Zapata.

The 72 species of plants and trees selected provide food for wildlife, help biodiversity to spread and fight air pollution. A study, for example, identified Mangifera indica as the best among six plant species found in Medellín at absorbing PM2.5 pollution — particulate matter that can cause asthma, bronchitis and heart disease — and surviving in polluted areas due to its “biochemical and biological mechanisms.”

And the urban planting continues to this day.

The groundwork is carried out by 150 citizen-gardeners like Pineda, who come from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds, with the support of 15 specialized forest engineers. Pineda is now the leader of a team of seven other gardeners who attend to corridors all across the city, shifting depending on the current priorities...

“I’m completely in favor of the corridors,” says [Victoria Perez, another citizen-gardener], who grew up in a poor suburb in the city of 2.5 million people. “It really improves the quality of life here.”

Wilmar Jesus, a 48-year-old Afro-Colombian farmer on his first day of the job, is pleased about the project’s possibilities for his own future. “I want to learn more and become better,” he says. “This gives me the opportunity to advance myself.”

The project’s wider impacts are like a breath of fresh air. Medellín’s temperatures fell by 2°C in the first three years of the program, and officials expect a further decrease of 4 to 5C over the next few decades, even taking into account climate change. In turn, City Hall says this will minimize the need for energy-intensive air conditioning...

In addition, the project has had a significant impact on air pollution. Between 2016 and 2019, the level of PM2.5 fell significantly, and in turn the city’s morbidity rate from acute respiratory infections decreased from 159.8 to 95.3 per 1,000 people [Note: That means the city's rate of people getting sick with lung/throat/respiratory infections.]

There’s also been a 34.6 percent rise in cycling in the city, likely due to the new bike paths built for the project, and biodiversity studies show that wildlife is coming back — one sample of five Green Corridors identified 30 different species of butterfly.

Other cities are already taking note. Bogotá and Barranquilla have adopted similar plans, among other Colombian cities, and last year São Paulo, Brazil, the largest city in South America, began expanding its corridors after launching them in 2022.

“For sure, Green Corridors could work in many other places,” says Zapata."

-via Reasons to Be Cheerful, March 4, 2024

[probablyasocialecologist]

Increasing the diversity of native plants in a single urban green space resulted in a sevenfold increase in the number of insect species after three years, Australian researchers have found. According to the study’s authors, there had previously been “little empirical evidence of how specific greening actions may mitigate the detrimental effects of urbanisation”.

[...]

Researchers measured baseline insect numbers the year before greening began, when 12 indigenous plant species were introduced to the space, and subsequently conducted insect surveys for the following three years. They identified 94 insect species in total, 91 indigenous to the Australian state of Victoria. The researchers estimated that by the final year of the study there were about 7.3 times more insect species than originally present, even though only nine plant species remained. The team also found substantial increases in the number of predator and parasitoid insect species, which help to regulate populations of pest insects. “These are two key groups that provide a really good ecological signal that the trophic network and all the proper interactions are happening at the site,” Mata said.

[departmentofinteriors]

[climatecalling]

“Guerrilla gardening is the practice of planting in public spaces in your neighbourhood” she says on a humid summer afternoon, walking between outlaw flower beds in Hackney, east London. “And that’s how I define it … because, for me, it’s all about community ownership and belonging, and I think we have a right to cultivate these spaces in the areas we call home – and a responsibility to, as well. “So-called public spaces have been really privatised, and communities actually don’t get a chance to interact with them often. So I think we do have a right to do that in the places we put down our roots, where we live.” ... “I do think there is an issue in society at the moment with the lack of agency and autonomy for people,” she says. “Guerrilla gardening, even if it is just sowing something in a tree bed, it might not change the world – you might help some bees, you might bring joy to someone walking down the street – but you’re also reminding people, or awakening something that is like ‘Maybe this is how it should be.’

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A network of parks and public spaces is in the works for the heart of Toronto. The City is advancing plans for its proposed Relic Linear Park network, which would bring a new linear path of public realm improvements, including a pair of park spaces, to the Grange Park neighbourhood. This community-led vision will include architectural relic stones — similar to those found at the Guild Park and Gardens — and Indigenous artwork to form a pathway of art and public spaces that weaves between Queen Street West and Dundas Street West via Simcoe Street, Michael Sweet Avenue, and St. Patrick Street.

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[home-phoenix]

Throwback to Crystal Palace Park's dinosaurs in the summer. London.

[feckcops]

Private companies are stealing public parks

“For years now, entertainment mega-corporations have targeted cash-strapped councils as amenable, affordable hosts for their events. From Clapham Common to Glasgow Green, city-dwellers across the UK have become accustomed to basslines vibrating their windows, five-metre fences encircling their playgrounds, and security guards policing what are effectively their gardens.

“Yet as entertainment companies try to recuperate massive pandemic losses with aggressive multi-year deals, while the climate crisis renders urban summers increasingly unbearable, the privatisation of public parkland is becoming harder to swallow.

“In April, dozens of Haringey residents descended on FoFP’s biggest-ever meeting to vent their frustrations, while a recent petition demanding private companies keep their hands off Finsbury Park was signed by thousands ... For the most part, the work of groups like FoFP and FCC is polite engagement with the council to ensure the park is properly maintained. Yet as councils’ approach to major events has become more aggressive, so have the friends groups’.

“In 2016, FoFP took Haringey to court over its outdoor events policy. The group lost the case – though it did win an agreement from Haringey that the money made from the park would be spent on it. Haringey claims to have done this, though to FoFP, the numbers don’t quite add up: while in information obtained by Novara Media via an FoI request, the council claims it spent £871,626 on staffing Finsbury Park in 2020-21, many have questioned where the money is going: the park has had no park ranger since late October, no on-site manager since May. ‘If you’ve got this money […] you sure as hell didn’t spend it here,’ says Simon, pointing to the chipped paint of the bench on which she’s sitting.”

[afrotumble]

[wewantclimateactionnow]

I observe building incursions into the inherited green spaces of Melbourne city, Grand Prix grandstands, cricket facilities, basket ball courts, etc. Shame.

The ideas here are well worth investigating. Share them please.

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki is known for imbuing his movies with big themes that include the importance of conserving the environment, but he doesn’t just talk the talk, he walks the walk too.

One place he likes to walk the walk — literally and metaphorically — is Sayama Hills in Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture. The 81-year-old director, who’s been residing in Tokorozawa for the past 52 years, credits the forested area for the creation of one of his most iconic characters, saying “If we didn’t live in Tokorozawa, Totoro would never have been born.”

The director has such a soft spot for the area that he’s been working hard to preserve it, turning it into “Totoro’s Forest” and even encouraging the local government to get on board with the preservation project. Never one to rest on his laurels, Miyazaki is keen to continue expanding the forest, and to do that, he and the city are now asking the public for help, with a crowdfunding campaign that offers a very special reward for contributors.

The campaign, which is part of the “Kitaakitsu/Kamiyasumatsu District Urban Green Space Conservation Project” currently being run by Tokorozawa City, aims to conserve the “Kaminoyama” green area and the “Akitsu no Mori” green area.

In order to “preserve precious greenery”, one percent of Tokorozawa City’s individual municipal tax revenue has been allocated to purchase the above-mentioned 3.5 hectares of land from landowners, but unfortunately this is not enough to prevent residential land development and the loss of green spaces.

Tokorozawa City is spending 1.8 billion yen (US$12.8 million) on the project, with Miyazaki donating 300 million yen ($2.1 million) of his own money towards the cause. However, the projected costs are estimated to be 2.6 billion yen ($18.5 million), which is where the crowdfunding campaign comes in.

Contributions towards the campaign, which aims to raise a total of 25 million yen, are set at 25,000 yen ($178.04). In return, supporters will receive five reproductions of background art used in the Ghibli movie My Neighbour Totoro.

To help drum up interest for the campaign, Studio Ghibli producer and co-founder Toshio Suzuki wrote this message, published on the campaign page.

“Kaminoyama is where the concept of ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ was born. We ask for your cooperation towards crowdfunding.”

As the birthplace of My Neighbour Totoro, preserving the area is of vital importance to not only the studio but also its fans. While the campaign is limited to people within Japan, as the background art can’t be shipped overseas, there’s been an overwhelming amount of support from local fans, with 86 percent of the funds raised as of this writing and only 36 sets remaining.

Once the campaign reaches its goal, the city will use all the funds raised to purchase land for the urban green space conservation project in the 2023 fiscal year. Preserving and maintaining the green areas in and around Totoro’s Forest is an ongoing project, however, so it’s highly likely that this isn’t the end of the crowdfunding campaigns and Ghibli offers coming our way.

After all, preserving the environment for future generations is a never-ending endeavour befitting Miyazaki, the never-ending man.

The campaign has reached its initial goal, but there's more than a week left to contribute to the project and give the campaigners more to work with:

[spanblue]

[probablyasocialecologist]

"In the United States or Canada, there is an aesthetization of gardens, which are larger, maintained, organized, and marketed by real estate developers to raise the price of the surroundings," explains Anguelovski.

"We have been able to corroborate our initial hypothesis that greener cities become more unequal and inequitable," she explains while stressing that this strong relationship between the greening of municipalities in the 1990s-2000s and the gentrification that occurred in the 2010s has been demonstrated.

"We find green infrastructures that can be more disruptive than therapeutic for health. The research also shows how green gentrification contributes to the socio-cultural exclusion of vulnerable residents, especially immigrants and racialized people," adds Anguelovski.

[...]

"These results do not mean that green infrastructure is negative, quite the contrary, as it has been shown to have enormous benefits for physical and mental health. The problem is the lack of prioritization of issues of equity and justice in green urban planning," says Anguelovski, who reminds us that what is needed is for city councils to be aware of this and to accompany this process with policies that control property speculation in the area, promote social housing developments, limit short-term rental licenses and/or encourage the creation of support networks between neighbors, local businesses, and the protection of more informal green spaces.

[unrealityliminal]

[3ai]

العراق - الانبار

[wholelottabotany]

The Food Sovereignty Revolution, Right Down the Street

Lemme get on a soapbox really quick about Community Gardens. Because home farms are one thing, local farms are one thing, but nothing can bring people together and inspire confidence like a community garden. 

Starting to grow your own food can be a daunting task, with a lot of conflicting information, and it can be difficult when you don’t have the land you need. Having an accessible area for people of all walks of life to come together and experience the trials of food growing makes it easier to inspire people to overcome the learning curve. 

I found a nice resource in finding local community gardens by you if you'd like to participate this summer. I also HIGHLY recommend reaching out to anyone you know from Churches, Parks, Schools, Recreation Centers, and other public spaces, and ask them if gardens can be added to their possible developments. I have a few resources on my website for the importance of these gardens if you want to learn more, or send them to people you are trying to convince. It is extremely important that people understand how beneficial this can be for themselves, and their people.

[ottogatto]

The Revolution That Is Changing Architecture:

Although it fails to talk about implementing as many green spaces and trees as possible everywhere in cities, I believe it's a complementary solution. And I won't say that classical/traditional architecture is the only solution against "modern" buildings, but we definitely need buildings that feel more alive, not the simplist, concrete, grey, box-shaped buildings we see sprouting everywhere. It's important against the climate crisis and for our mental wellbeing.