Public local authority budget

"Since August 2004, the city of Montpellier has allowed residents to rent plots of garden, called "Les jardins Familiaux"(family gardens). The first plots were located in the Mosson district, but in view of the success of this operation, the city decided to open additional gardens at the Grands Grès site in the Port Marianne district, then at the Rieucoulon in the Croix- Money. The enthusiasts of green spaces can thus indulge in the pleasure of gardening in family thanks to these brackets of greenery. They grow vegetables and fruit as they please"(Ref. 1). Seventeen gardens (as of August 3, 2020) are located in different areas across the city (Ref. 6). "These gardens are urban planning tools favoring the social bond and the preservation of biodiversity and the urban landscape, for the gardeners interviewed these are essentially places of nature and well-being in the city"(Ref. 4)

Organic Without Borders (OWB) is an NGO (ideell förening) that works to develop and support methods for a sustainable future anywhere in the world. The NGO develops methods through socio-ecological city farming and working pedagogically with children and adults and their relationship to food and farming in Sweden and other countries (ref.1).

Approximately one-fifth of the rain that falls in Malmö's urban area is led to Risebergabäcken, which makes it by far Malmö's largest watercourse. None of the other watercourses receives more than a very small part of the municipality's stormwater. The flow in Risebergabäcken is in many places it is narrow and deep, which means that the water rises quickly when there is a lot of rain (ref. 7). Large precipitation and asphalt industrial environment in Skogholm's meadows (Skogholms ängar) have long been a problem of overload in Risebergabäcken, but the ecological stormwater system delays and cleans the water, as well as preventing erosion and floods (ref. 1).

The curtain forest at the end of the city is a project that was initiated by the Timisoara's Municipality in 2001 by planting different tree species and creating a barrier for high-temperature summers. It's 60 m high and it was designed to stand in front of very strong winds especially since Timisoara is a city located in a very plain area. Now, it comprises 23 hectares and the municipality aims at 50. (2)

The Nature Island Pennenfeld-Bonn ("Naturinsel Pennenfeld") is a community garden project of the Lebensqualität im Alter - LeA (Quality of Life in Old Age) Association, the District Management (QM) of Pennenfeld and the municipal housing company VEBOWAG (9). The project started in 2012 and its aim was the transformation of a 1,800 sqm large tree-lined lawn area (9). The lawn was to be transformed into a park-like natural community garden for recreation where elderly residents have more opportunity to experience nature, while at the same time it is a place of encounter that promotes social stability by encouraging all other residents to get engaged in the planning, implementation and maintenance processes (1,3,9). Besides enhancing the quality of life for residents and elderly people living with dementia, other project objectives were to foster and increase the local biodiversity as well as to strengthen community building and mutual support in the neighbourhood (2).

In 2013, architecture firm BIG's design was chosen for a proposed Museum of the Human Body in Montpellier (Ref. 1). The plan was "An ambitious scenographic project resulting from a simple and clear spatial design. The alliance of its architectural, environmental, and functional qualities". "The gentle slopes of its roofs transform into a landscape intertwining vegetable and mineral terraces that provide direct access to pedestrians on the urban sidewalk and the park" (Ref. 2). It would have involved a "park of eight hectares" (Ref. 12, page 4). The project has not yet become a reality (as of August 2, 2020).

Sofielund invests in a sustainable area. Carpool/joint recycling centre were some of the proposals discussed when property owners, Malmö city and some experts discussed how Sofielund could become more sustainable in the future. The idea is that the environmental days in Malmö (e.g. a workshop) will lead to an action plan to make Sofielund greener. Property owners Sofielund has been at the forefront of a local sustainability work that can be a model for the rest of the country. In February 2017, a memorandum of understanding was signed about concrete efforts to strengthen the Sofielund area (Ref. 1, 2). There is a strong political support for the work that is being done in Sofielund and the BID concept is now upscaled to a sixth project area called Case Sofielund. (Ref. 6).

With its parking areas, ponds, the Lutter stream, playground facilities, walking and jogging paths, the green corridor of Bielefeld, called Luttergrünzug offers recreation opportunity to around 36, 000 people, living in the surrounding areas. As a link between the eastern city center and the district of Heepen, it also enables walking and cycling routes for commuting and shopping away from the busy streets of the city (7). However, the green corridor has been showing some structural and functional defects such as the silting up of the ponds, conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists and the increasing overgrowth of the green belt (8). In order to solve these problems, the renovation and redesign of the Green Corridor was proposed. The regeneration project addresses different needs and requirements of the municipality, namely providing the comfortable infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists, and the increase of attractiveness of the neighbouring residential areas. In the planning process, special attention was paid to the improvement of the draining system and the reservoirs of the area that will protect the Belt from flooding. (8)

Two regeneration plans were developed with citizens' involvement and presented to the political committee. In 2017, the implementation of the "smaller" variant was voted for, which was already presented in the first citizens' workshop (1, 4).

CityTree is a four-meter high freestanding installation that is able to purify city air of harmful pollutants by using a special moss culture. (Reference 1) The local government of the 3rd district tested the technology under a 6 month trial from September 2017 to March 2018. The CityTree pilot project in Budapest was concluded, once the district administration decided not to continue the project further due to technical reasons. The irrigation system started to malfunction very early in the trial period, which caused the mosses to dry out and thus producing no quantifiable results. (Reference 9)

The first stage of the investment: Building an urban park in the city area where there is a lack of green recreational spaces for the citizens. The park is to be built on the undeveloped ground. The initiative involves cleaning the area, planting greenery, purification and regulation of the watercourse Warszowiec and building stone stream edges, building the bike and running paths, 2 playgrounds for various age groups, open-air gym, and a multifunctional field for basketball, volleyball, tennis and table tennis (planned). The project is supplemented with the so-called small architecture including benches, rubbish bins, bicycle racks, tables and bowers [1,2]. The second stage: executing the planned multifunctional sports field and building a so-called physical activity square with a wooden platform, wooden pergola by the stream. A fence around the playground is built and new lighting and monitoring systems introduced. The second stage assumes management and maintenance of the green areas too [5,6].