Maintenance and management of urban nature

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]

The Orbital Forest of Tirana is an innovative urban forest that as a green belt forms a natural growth boundary for the City. Tirana has experienced rapid development in the past decades that led to population growth challenging municipal services and infrastructure, while climate change also posed extensive pressures to the urban area with intense flooding, precipitation, urban heat and degrading environment (1, 4). The Orbital Forest is a ring on the periphery of the City that connects 14,000 ha of Tirana’s parks, agricultural fields, and forests, maintaining the ecosystem and supporting biodiversity. (3, 4) The NBS aims to increase urban greenery through the plantation of 2 million trees that fit well to the existing ecosystem while also creating a natural boundary to halt urban sprawl (1,4,5). The afforestation of the Orbital Forest has been done through the “Donate a Tree For Tirana” campaign started in 2017 where citizens, businesses and international organisations can plant a tree adding to the green belt. As of 2021, more than 440,700 trees in the framework of the "Donate a Tree" campaign are also bringing urban nature closer to residents (3).

Kaysone experiences severe flooding events on an annual basis due to its location to the banks of Mekong river, as well as periodic storms, and past responses to these threats have focused on the Savanxay Market and the Southern Flood Gate, but with limited success (Ref. 1). This intervention focuses on the development of an integrated adaptation plan for the area around the market and adjacent to the Mekong canal. This plan includes NBS-specific components considering how the market's parking area provides an important opportunity for bioengineering and green cover, and that there is "an opportunity to use adjoining land as a constructed wetland and park for recreation, flood retention and storm water treatment" (Ref. 1). The adaptation plan comprises seven points overall, focusing on wastewater recycling, walking paths, proper drainage and green space in addition to an educational component related to climate change and its impacts (Ref. 1).

The redevelopment of the Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park (Singapore) saw the naturalisation of the previously channelised Kallang River, as well as the installation of wetland cells as water cleansing biotopes and creation of butterfly habitats (Ref. 1).

The Kallang River was previously confined to a concrete canal that ran to the southern edges of Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park (Ref. 1). The channel segregated the two residential areas situated on either side of the park, with the river's 2.7km continuous concrete channel being crossable at only certain defined points (Ref. 3). Following its naturalisation, culminating in 2012, the now 3.2km meandering river is considered the park's highlight, "merg[ing] seamlessly with the park's greenery" (Refs. 1 & 6), and creating a "blue-green recreational network which is well-integrated with nearby residential areas" (Ref. 2).

The city of San Salvador was built at the foot of a volcano and down its slopes, it is prone to droughts, floods and landslides. In 2020, Tropical Storms Amanda and Cristobal struck the city with torrential rainfall and gale-force winds triggering landslides and floods, causing damage to homes, infrastructure and roads, and with severe impacts on topsoil depletion affecting the fertility of economically and environmentally central coffee plantations[3].
To meet the economic and environmental challenges caused by such events, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) together with El Salvador’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, local organizations and coffee growers launched an project focusing on the Arenal Monserrat watershed located on the slopes of the volcano [3,4]. Through the integration of Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) the initiative aim to address the effects of climate change by restoring coffee plantations and forests and digging infiltration ditches to be used as sponges to reduce flood risks for 115,000 people by 2022 [1,4,5]. The project was launched as part of the multi-city CityAdapt Project of UNEP and GEF, aiming to provide tools to local governments plan for adaptation and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from their cities while conserving their ecosystems.

The Recreio green corridor project, launched in 2012 by the Municipal Secretariat for the Environment and several city departments, aims to protect and enhance the rich biodiversity and ecosystems of the area, to help with the resilience and adaptation of the west side of the city, an area affected by coastal flooding and erosion. The project mostly focused on preserving, connecting, and expanding the existing local urban nature elements and protecting their ecology. Lastly, the project also aimed to educate the residents about native vegetation and help build social interaction and cohesion between the local communities [Ref 1]. The project was designed to preserve and connect 320.76 ha of protected areas and add 60.73 ha of open public spaces and squares. And in total, the corridor has a linear extension of close to 8 kilometers, passing through very diverse urban areas (Ref. 7), including natural parks, a lagoon system, water canals, and social housing areas.

In 2018, a new annexe building to the Parliament of Victoria was built to host the increased number of municipal employees. The new building is located in the heritage garden that surrounds the parliament precinct of which one hundred per cent of the footprint has been crowned with two new flourishing rooftop gardens that merge the building into its extraordinary landscape setting (1). The new garden is one of the biggest rooftop gardens in Melbourne and accommodates 300 mostly native plant species that characterise the Australian meadows with wildflowers, grasses and shrubs (2). During the construction of the annexe building and the landscaping of the rooftop garden and the connected sunken courtyard key elements of the heritage garden were protected as touchstones for example a Federal Oak planted in 1890, a Norfolk Island Pine and a camphor laurel ( 7). The garden encourages greater biodiversity within the dense urban context, provides thermal insulation to the new building and creates social spaces for events, announcements and contemplation (2).

Two River Urban Park is a public space located towards the confluence of the Liesbeek and Black Rivers and is one of the largest urban green lungs in the City of Cape Town. It is approximately 240 hectares in extent. The Park comprises sensitive ecological systems and habitats, extensive open space areas, institutions, historical buildings and cultural landscapes (2). The City of Cape Town and the Western Cape Province own significant proportions of the park and in 2011, the Western Cape Government started considering the sustainable redevelopment of the TRU Park into a mixed-used urban green area including housing development, heritage protection, the rehabilitation of the degraded environment and recreation opportunity creation (1). Since 2016, the project has been on hold due to the modification of the planning law Local Spatial Development Framework that affects the redevelopment plans of the Two Rivers Urban Park (1).

"Cape Town Environmental Education Trust (CTEET) is a non-profit environmental education organization that seeks to improve both the inclusiveness of urban nature reserves and the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation by connecting nearby disadvantaged and racialized communities with municipally-owned nature reserves." (1 p15) CTEET has 3 flagship projects: providing low-cost environmental education programs to children, offering training and development to Cape Town youth to access jobs in the Green Economy and supporting and driving conservation initiatives in Cape Town through its Nature Care Fund (2).