Earmarked public budget

The area was planned to be the Öresund Region's most climate-smart city district: an energy efficient, resource-saving and green district with a hundred percent renewable energy use.” (ref. 2). The area's development program focused on the ecological aspect of sustainability and took responsibility for that part of the city's sustainability work (ref. 7).

The Green and Blue Network in France is a national policy which "aims to restore ecological continuity in order to promote the migration of species and the resilience of ecosystems to face habitat threats and climate change. It also aims to strengthen the place of nature in the city and public awareness." In Montpellier, implementation of "this project has improved knowledge of the city's natural heritage and enhanced ecological continuity, as well as protecting, and sustainably managing high-potential sites and integrating the social dimension, raising public awareness, the observation of nature"(Ref. 2).

El Paseo de Canalejas is "an alley of trees inside the city tracing a central green corridor which exhibits its old ficus whose shades provide a pleasant refuge to the visitors during the hottest days of the year. Those ficus trees are considered as natural heritage." (Ref. 1). "In order to protect the Monumental Arboreal Heritage, Alicante City Council has worked on the elaboration of a Catalog of Unique and Monumental Trees of Local Interest that reflects the inventory of this heritage and provides these specimens with protective measures" (Ref. 3).

“Xarxa de Sendes Urbanes de Alacant(Catalan)/Red de senderos urbanos (Spanish)” (Red of Urban Trails) is a network project developed by the city council consisting of urban trails classified into three types: environmental or natural trails, cultural or heritage trails and city trails, the latter as network connectors. The NBS focus on the first type (environmental and natural trails). (Ref 1) With the implementation of interconnected trails system and signage, the trails offer walks, educative explanation on the different species found in the area and provide leisure, relaxing and physical (running, hiking) opportunities to visitors and citizens. (Ref 2)

The initiative is comprised of a project to recover the coastal line of Alicante, from El Campello to Elx (approx. 21 km long). The Municipality called an ideas' competition with the aim of developing a sustainable coastal corridor project that includes an intervention on the entire Alicante coastline and generates a continuous itinerary integrated into the landscape with new places of opportunity for the residents of the city (Ref. 7). The two-stage competition sought proposals for a new ‘coastal passage’ featuring the creation of new multi-purpose public spaces promoting biodiversity and accessibility (Ref 13). The winner was announced on the beginning of 2019 and the Municipality planned to start the development of the first 2 parts of the project. The winning project of the competition bears the slogan "My connected archipelago" and is the work of the Grupo Aranea and Subarquitectura studios from Alicante (Ref 14), a project that considers ecological and sustainable principles (Ref. 9).

The greening of the Bega channel is a project which dates from 2008 and which aims at cleaning and revitalizing the channel on a distance of 44 km, in order to improve water quality, increase economic activities related with the river, and avoid future floods of the area. Since the channel has not been revitalized from 1945, the 2008 project is seen as an important step in improving not only the life quality of the Timisoara's inhabitants but also a major step in including environmental issues on the official agenda of the municipality. (1)

The Botanical Park is originally a garden which went through a modernization and rearrangement process in 2008. The park covers an area of 8.41 hectares and has a varied flora which is of Romania and also of various areas of the world which have a similar climate to the country. The purpose of the rearrangement was to maintain the area for scientific endeavours and to educate the public with respect to the importance of the environment. The municipality added this area to the 13th existing parks of Timisoara, which are part of the green belt of the city. (1)

Bastion Theresia Timisoara was built as a defensive perimeter for the Romanian town of Timisoara and has languished for decades in the center of the city. The bastion was rehabilitated and it incorporates green spaces and a community center. The old fortress' location in the middle of town makes it a natural hub for transportation and assembly, and the extensive green roof incorporates it into the city's urban green belt. (1)

Street alignments is a 2008 project developed by the Municipality of Timisoara in order to create a green corridor between the centre of the city and peripheral areas. It involves the creation of alveoli by mounting lawn and ornamental bark in different intersections of the city.

Ecological parks are parks that reduce stormwater runoff and pollutant emissions. It refers to a number of techniques applied at the same time to reduce the total impervious surface of a parking space, the decrease in the surface temperature and maintain a green island in crowded areas. In Timisoara, until the date of this completed intervention (2009), there were located 11 ecological parking spaces, placed throughout the city, most of them near building blocks in former industrial quarters (3)