Environmental quality

B.Bylon Roof Park is a green park on top of the B.Amsterdam building which provides a healthy environment for employees and citizens of the neighbourhood. The park contains a vegetable garden, recreational facilities, meeting spots, sport facilities, a herb garden, a water basin, fruit trees, chickens and a restaurant (1,2,5,8). The roof park stores and uses storm water and an organic circular decomposing system provides plant nutrients. (4,7).

PopinnPark claimed to be the first indoor park of Europe and was created in an abandoned store, aiming at improving the quality of the neighbourhood and bringing nature closer to people. It became a meeting spot for communities, artists, businesses and citizens for exchanging knowledge on social/sustainability issues or for recreation. Popinn Park contained plants that improved air quality, local businesses that provide fair foods and drinks and nature-based art. (1)
After running for two years, Popinn Park closed and was transformed into an art gallery under the name of Popinn Art. Since 2018, Popinnart is an artist-run nomadic collective with over 25 contemporary artists. The art on offer is varied and qualitatively and conceptually challenging. There is a choice of spatial work, figurative and abstract, collages, photography, paintings, drawings, textiles and video. (5)

The initiative involves establishing beehives on the roofs of the Catholic University of Lublin and the Centre for the Meetings of Cultures. It seeks to provide the habitat for the bees in the city, help in pollination, educate the society about the bees and shape more ecologically-friendly attitudes among the students, faculty and visitors. It should also produce honey that can be sold or distributed free of charge, which can serve in a promotional tool of the two institutions. The Centre for the Meetings of Cultures has additionally opened a garden to provide food for the pollinators [1,2,3,4,6]. In 2020, the initiative is still ongoing and expanding. Every year, the university organizes a competition about the life of bees for various age groups [7].

In 2008, a green wall of more than 500 m^2 using a hydroponic watering system was developed on the side of the Max Juvenal bridge. Designed by Patrick Blanc, french botanist and pioneer in the development of green walls, it is considered an "authentic work of art, which evolves over time and the seasons and contributes to "renaturing" the urban space" (Ref. 4, page 7). The wall is intended to illustrate the benefits that green walls can bring to the environment, such as the reduction of heat islands in urban areas and their contribution to cleaner air due to the production of oxygen and the reduction of CO2 rate by photosynthesis (Ref. 1).

The historical canal that was disconnected by a road in the 1970s is currently being restored by the municipality, creating a lively atmosphere allowing for water recreation, a boulevard and green spaces (ref. 1). A small element of this restoration is the addition of green elements by a citizen group, which entails improving ecological, aesthetic and historical quality of the canal by implementing eco-friendly riverbanks, green connecting zones and floating vegetation islands (ref. 3,9,11,12).

It is the most extensive green roof in Lublin, designed to cover 16,700 square meters rooftop area of the shopping mall 'Castle Terraces' (Tarasy Zamkowe). Its purpose is to serve as a green recreational area for relaxation and public events, as well as an ecological solution for heat mitigation and water retention. The roof is divided into two parts: 1) an area accessible to the public with flower meadows, walking paths, viewing points from which the visitors can see Lublin’s old town 2) ‘intensive cultivation area’ with endemic trees, bushes and succulents which are not directly accessible to the public [1,2,3,8].

The Polder Roof is a green roof originally installed on the top of the Old School Amsterdam, Gaasterlandstraat, Amsterdam with innovative controllable water storage and drainage system on which crops are grown, solar panels are installed and that provides space for recreation. (1,2) Thereby, it combines multiple benefits including the reduction of heat stress, noise reduction, sustainable energy provision, biodiversity, food production and climate change adaptation (2,7). The Polder Roof was a pilot project that won an innovation award and is viewed as an example for urban climate change adaptation solutions. (2).

In 2019, due to the renovation of the former Old School building, it was necessary to relocate the Polder roof to a different place. The Polder Roof is a completely de-mountable system, made up of crates with a sedum layer on top, thus it could be removed quite easily from the Old School roof and put somewhere else. In the name of circularity, the sustainable drainage system was moved to the roof of the South Food Bank building. (10,11,12) With the relocation of the Polder Roof system, however, the size of the green roof has decreased to 1200 sqm from 2010 sqm (2).

The project assumes planting roses and other flowery shrubs in the Szczecin's district of Kijewo. Characterized by heavy traffic, the area has benefited from 'rose gardens' along its main roads and neighbourhood squares as a way of mitigating the traffic noise. The rose gardens serve as natural acoustic screens for noise reduction. The initiative additionally aims to enhance the aesthetics of the area and the image of the Szczecin's city - in line with its long-term brand management strategy "Szczecin floating garden 2050". According to the initiators of the project, it refers to the tradition of roses, which would decorate the same neighbourhood in the past [1].

Due to the challenges caused by climate change, Hamburg decided to become greener and developed a comprehensive, pioneering green roof strategy. The strategy aims at creating 100 hectares of new green walls by 2019 by providing grants for building owners for greening roofs and offering them rain water fee reduction owing to the rain water retention of the green roofs. (Reference 1) The financial support offered until the end of 2019 is 3 million EUR. (Reference 2) The services offered by the city in this plan consist of four pillars: promotion (financial incentive), dialogue, regulation, and scientific support. (Reference 7)

Since the mid-eighties, several German cities like Karlsruhe have been implementing green tram tracks, followed by a period of decline due to incompatibility with technical and construction requirements (Ref. 2). Since around 2003, the city of Karlsruhe has re-introduced the greening of tram tracks with the main objectives of noise reduction and cloudburst infiltration (climate adaptation). Mostly in combination with urban redevelopment projects, several tram tracks across Karlsruhe have been renewed and greened in different forms by using continuously advancing technologies (Ref. 3, 6 and 7).