Viewing and outlook points

The municipal government of the Yiwu city in China has launched the Green Lungs of the City Project (GLCP) in 2019. The overarching goal was to build a green lung, which will create more green spaces for residents in Yiwu, mitigate environmental pressures and improve the city's resilience to climate change. Under the project, a green corridor was created to reconnect the roads, rivers, ponds and lakes where different tree species were planted. Additionally, wetlands were constructed and restored to improve resilience against climate change disasters. The project is still in the ongoing phase, and a forest-wetland ecological park is under development in the city's central area. The GLCP aims to use different types of NBS elements to promote sustainable urban development and to provide multiple ecosystem services to the citizens in a highly urbanised area. [1]

Al Shaheed Park is the largest park in the country. The park was designed to include besides its green spaces, several buildings (museums, parking) populated with green roofs and an artificial lake. The size of the park with all the mentioned grey and green elements stands at 20 ha. The park is viewed as an encompassing part of a green belt that surrounds the city of Kuwait. From an environmental point of view, the park was built to protect the city from sandstorms and to reduce air pollution. From a cultural point of view, the park and the museums are providing the public with high-quality programs, events and spaces, and part of their mission is to spread awareness and educate the public on the importance of the country’s land, history and environment, in addition to the encouragement of international and regional exchange of arts. In addition, the park is meant to commemorate the victims of the first Gulf War. (1,2,3)

The city of Bishkek once had the status of one of the greenest and most pleasant cities in the Soviet Union. The situation has deteriorated from year to year, so much so that in 2009 Bishkek was ranked sixteenth in the list of the thirty dirtiest cities in the world in a study published by The Blacksmith Institute, an American NGO which discloses each year an urban environment assessment report. This is why it seems urgent to us to react and work to protect, renovate and develop the green spaces of Bishkek. The proposed project aims to protect the unique forest of Bishkek called Karagachevaïa Rocha (“grove of elms”) and to redevelop it to make it an environmental education centre. This center, which would be the first of its kind in Kyrgyzstan, would include in the same place an arboretum, a leisure area as well as an animal park in which various rare or endangered species, present in Kyrgyzstan or in the countries of Central Asia, would be kept in semi-freedom. Karagachevaya Rocha has nearly 123 hectares in total, which is the largest green space in Bishkek and one of the oldest. This adds a symbolic character to the project. (3)

Park Podnikolie, with an area of about 100 hectares, is part of the water-green frame of the city and is included in the conservation zone of the historical and cultural value of the city of Mogilev [4,11]. Since olden times on the territory of Podnikol, there were up to 400 manor plots, occupied mainly by vegetable gardens. Now Podnikolie is a large park, which has become a favourite place for residents and guests of the regional centre [1]. More than 1125 tree saplings have been planted on the territory of Podnikolie to preserve the integrity of the historical ground, the historical territory [1,9,10,11]. Thus, the park is also called the "green heart" of Mogilev city. The densely planted area is officially a quiet recreation area where people "merge" with nature [1,2,6,10]. The project's goal is to improve the urban management system, promote the implementation of the principles of green urban planning, and improve citizens' quality of life through effective cooperation between local authorities and the population [2,9,10].

As part of the "Urban Forest Policy", the first Miyawaki urban forest was created in an area of 2,850 square meters in Lahore, Pakistan. The initiative was a result of a public-private partnership between Lahore Development Authority (LDA) and Restore Green. The project was carried out under the PM Khan 10 billion tree plantation drive. Miyawaki is a technique pioneered by Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, which helps build dense, native forests. The approach is supposed to ensure that plant growth is 10 times faster and the resulting plantation is 30 times denser than usual. It involves planting dozens of native species in the same area and becomes maintenance-free after the first three years. [1, 2, 3]

Recognising the benefits which urban forests bring to its citizens, Salvador has committed to protecting and restoring the Atlantic Forest, and has developed its own local framework which goes beyond national requirements (Ref. 1). The city has launched several programmes under its 'Salvador, Capital da Mata Atlantica' initiative, which together aim to restore the forest which has "suffered from severe deforestation" (Ref. 1). Included under the umbrella initiative are programmes such as the "'Delivery of trees', recovery of parks and collective planting" (Ref. 4).

Located in the heart of Hung Phu, a new urban area within Can Tho, K-Villa+ has been designed to "mak[e] the most of open and harmonious space[s] with nature, using green design solutions to improve bioclimatic comfort for users, while respecting sustainable values ​​and being friendly to the living environment" (Ref. 5). The low construction density of the building project has been coupled with prioritisation and installation of green areas both on the building itself and in the surrounding ground; permeable coverings to increase water percolation, and landscaping with native and climate-adapted trees and plants (Refs. 1 & 5.) An ecological pond has further been included in the landscaping of the villa's grounds and a rainwater harvesting system has been installed (Ref. 3). Through the application of these green design solutions, the urban heat island is considered to be reduced and bioclimate improved for those within the building, and biodiversity promoted through the planting of a variety of native species (Refs. 1, 2, 3 & 5).

Note that due to a lack of data, the exact point location of the villa is not depicted in the map below, but rather the new urban district, Hung Phu, in which the villa sits.

Medellin is the second-largest city in Colombia. The city used to be one of the most dangerous in the world, as Pablo Escobar founded here the Medellin cartel. After the death of Escobar, the city's homicide rate has decreased by 95% and extreme poverty by 66%, thanks in part to a string of innovative mayors who laid out plans to integrate the poorest and most violent hillside neighbourhoods into the city centre in the valley below. The same innovative mayors realised that Columbia and its cities are very vulnerable to climate change being located in a tropical zone and is influenced by El Niño and the La Niña. In Medellin, the municipality has built upon a tradition of planning to become an urban lab for the construction of public life with the aim of inclusive, peaceful and sustainable development. As such starting in 2008 Medellin began implementing a green strategy whose goal was the creation of a green belt around the city as well as waste control. The intervention discussed in this case is one initiated in 2014 when the municipality carried out planting and reforestation projects for the protection of the eastern slopes of the city. (1,2,3)

Tongnan Dafosi Wetland Park is located on both sides of Fu River flowing through the central area of Chongqing Tongnan District. Its south side is right next to the national tourist spot – the Great Buddha Temple (Dafosi). Due to the increasing frequency and severity of extreme rainstorms, the area is prone to floods. To build an urban wetland park that is adaptive to floods, designers retained the original wetland environment along the river channel and set up pedestrian corridors to enable citizens’ close contact with wetland nature. [1, 3] This project excavates two important cultural elements of Tongnan: 1) the shipping culture with a long history; and 2) the Buddhist culture based on the Great Buddha Temple. [1]

The Ningbo Ecological Corridor is a post-industrial landscape ecological reconstruction project. It is located in the middle of the Eastern New Town in Ningbo, with a total area of 90 hectares [4]. Built upon a typical post-industrial site with degraded ecologies that needs to be healed and would soon become part of a new urbanized district, this project is holistic ecosystem services-oriented, introducing terraced wetland to manage elevation change of the site to slow the flows of urban runoffs from the street down to the river and remove the nutrients [1]. “Before being designed, the site and surrounding areas were fragmented farmland, villages and factories that were planned to be relocated - a typical brownfield in the rural-urban fringe of the southern region of China”[1]. With the implementation of the project, "the original channelized river is transformed into a meandering eco-friendly waterway dotted with tree isles to increase the interface between organisms and water bodies to empower the river’s purification capacity. The project uses productive crops and annual flowers that are rotated to bring seasonal surprise and agricultural vitality to the growing city. Boardwalks are designed to allow visitors to have intimate experience of nature and the nostalgic pastoral landscape. Pavilions made of corten steel floats on wetlands and terraces, giving the ecological corridor a touch of contemporary urban life and art. [1] "As a result, this project demonstrated landscape as an ecological infrastructure that heals the degraded ecological system meanwhile provides social and cultural services to the establishing communities." [1]