Green space and habitat

In 2014, students, instructors and representatives of an appropriate company built a "small green roof" on the balcony above the entrance to the Department of Architecture at the Bialystok University of Technology. The initiative was a part of the "Green City by nature" project - a nationwide educational campaign about nature-based urban solutions. It took only 5 hours to unfold the roll of grass and prepare the ground for all year thuja and vines [1,2].

Weaver Square Community Garden started in May 2011 on a derelict site owned by Dublin City Council. The site contains the Community Garden and 28 individual allotments let out by the council. The main focus of the Community Garden is to create a safe and relaxing green space for all to use and enjoy. The organizers hope in the future to have more emphasis on the garden as a learning experience, with open days & workshops and other related talks. Dublin City Council has given notice that Weaver Square Community Garden and 27 family allotments are to close at the end of 2018. (Ref. 1; Ref. 2; Ref. 3)

As part of a larger project, this project aimed at creating a vertical garden in the Levante Square, in the Deustro neighborhood, the city of Bilbao. The intervention was initiated by the Bilbao's municipality in 2016 and aimed at creating a green area that was a bit unconventional and artistic at the same time. The landscape design incorporates local elements such as the trawlers, the cliffs of the Cantabrian coast and the local architecture, integrating nature and tradition (Ref 1).

Abandoibarra is an area of ​​the town of Bilbao, next to the Bilbao estuary, sizing ​​348,500 square meters. Abandoibarra has been the industrial zone of Bilbao, where shipyards and other companies related to the industrial sector were located. Building upon the 1997 master plan completed by Balmori Associates, Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects and Aguinaga y Asociados, the area has been reinvented as an international cultural district and tourist destination. Two-thirds of the 30-hectare site is dedicated to parks and open spaces, creating a public oasis and grounds for a suite of buildings by master architects (Ref 1,2).

The company running the Zabalgarbi waste disposal site manages a solid waste–to-energy plant and also houses a mechanical biological treatment (MBT) plant, a composting plant, a landfill and a leachate treatment plant. During construction of the first plant, Zabalgarbi regenerated and recovered the entire Artigas-Arraiz area covering 108 hectares. The area was degraded by shaft mining activity and an opencast quarry. The project aimed at the reforestation and landslide mitigation of this degraded area. Today the area has been reforested, trails were built and space provided for people to enjoy themselves in gardens, picnic areas and along forest tracks. (Ref 1)

Zorrotzaurre is an artificial peninsula located within the Deusto district of Bilbao, Spain. It was formed during the 1950s and the 1960s, when a canal was built to facilitate navigation in the estuary of Bilbao. The Zorrotzaurre project is the latest major urban renewal project to commence in Bilbao. It is an integral and sustainable plan that recuperates a currently derelict site to convert it into a new quarter, and which also includes a flood protection system with water tanks to retain water and a flood protection barrier (Ref 1)

The re-urbanization of the Poligono de Levante neighbourhood included the creation of two large urban parks to form a green area of 47 722 m2 and several environmental considerations such as a bridge for fauna (Ref 1), as it is a strategical zone of Palma . It is a combination of different initiatives, some of which include green elements (Ref 1 and Ref 3).

Vertical Garden is a 110 m2 garden installed in 2015 by Singular Green in front of the Hotel HM Tropical, as an outdoor project. (Ref 1) In October 2016, there was another 100m2 of garden installed. In 2020, there are also other companies that are trying to install vertical gardens on the island (Ref 4). There are special plants that were chosen due to its adaptive characteristics, as well as a special arrangement of the plants for aesthetics (Ref 1).

The government of Mallorca promotes orchards, as part of an ecological movement in Spain. As a result, five orchards were constructed, reclaiming abandoned urban spaces by the Mallorca city government in 2010.
The project has three pillars: strengthening social cohesion and inclusion, creating opportunities for education and for recreation. They were also constructed with pensioners in mind (Ref 2).
There would be an annual draw to give to distribute the orchards. However, this got delayed since 2013. In 2019, the municipality took back the property from the previous owners, and one of the orchards was taken from the list of orchards due to its bad conditions (Ref 5). In 2020, there was going to be a new draw for the distribution of orchards with new focus groups requirements but due to Covid19, this project has been paused (Ref 5).

The Urban Forest project represents an increase of urban trees in the city. There will be two phases of this project. In the first, it consists of a transformation of an eye-sore and abandoned space, around previous Canodrome, into a large urban forest (Ref 1, 9). The second one will be located in the land of the velodrome of Es Tirador. This projec has been delaid due to unforeseen costs (Ref 10).