SUNDAY, FEB 5, 2023: NOTE TO FILE
Module 5-10
Green urbanism
Green Urbanism is an interdisciplinary collaborative response from built environment professionals, such as, town planners, landscape architects, environmental engineers, transport planners, urban designers and architects, as well as, support professionals, such as, psychologists, sociologists and economists, in order to create more sustainable and harmonious relationships among spaces, communities and lifestyles (Source: Wikipedia). This response has acknowledged that the rural to urban migration is creating huge pressure on existing urban centres, many of which are not coping to keep up with the provision of extensive networks of utilities, transport, housing and public facilities. A huge negative impact upon these urban centres is the growing pollution and consequential heat island, which is contributing to global warming, as shown in Figure below.
Urban heat island effect. Source: https://bayareamonitor.org/article/summer-in-the-city-seeking-relief-from-urban-heat-islands/
Green urbanism is therefore a positive response designed to mitigate urban heat islands through mass greening of sidewalks, roadways, roofs, vertical walls, additional parks and conservation areas, which impact of tree-scapes is shown in left part of Figure below. Green urbanism also integrates SUDS and waterways as can be seen in right part of Figure below in the massive project which transformed Seoul. An inherent challenge of most cities is the pollution of its stormwater and waterways. Cleaning up these waterways presents big challenges, but the concept of floating islands with wetland-type plants provides the ideal habitat for micro-organisms to populate the plant roots trailing in the water and thus clean up these waterways. The video below from Biomatrix Water “living water cities” demonstrates these opportunities.
Green urbanism through restoration of waterways, Cheonggyecheon River, Seoul, Korea
[Green urbanism isn't green even if an overlight of a city failed to detect any structure not covered in plant growth. Just pass an ordinance that all roofs be green roofs and the sides of all building have planter up all sides no higher than the plant growing in them (and all large planter able to grow trees have smaller planters to cover their sides, All streets to be covered in planters. If only edible plants allowed, then the produce might feed the urban population for a day, maybe two, but the footprint of the city would be almost as big as if it were devoid of anything green other than paint. Will 70% of people living in cities by 2050, assume the flows of energy and materials into the city and pollution out of the greenest of green cities to be not remotely sustainable and residents to persist a few days longer than in the militantly non-green cities, maybe. It could be that non-green cities will be more likely to consume green cities than vice versa.]
Module 5, lesson 11
