Green city

Stockholm Royal Seaport: Aiming for World-Class Sustainability

Helena Klintstrom — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:31:22 +0000

When finished, Stockholm Royal Seaport plans to hold 10.000 new apartments and 30.000 new work places. In addition to housing and offices, the area will also include urban parks, an art gallery and a harbor for cruise ships. The area is located immediately east of the city center, right by the water and the Royal Urban National Park, making it a very attractive area for a new district.

Århus: Allotments more popular than ever

Sarah Armitage — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 10:27:29 +0000

In Denmark, allotment gardens are a popular breathing space for many town and city dwellers. Small houses, often not much bigger than a shed, gorgeous flower beds, red chequered tablecloths, chats across the garden fence and the Danish flag flying on a Sunday are the idyllic image many Danes have of life in an allotment garden. Allotments in Århus’s Skovlunden association, not far from the city centre, can only be bought by people who live in flats and have no garden. Some have even been on the waiting list for as long as 14 years.

Copenhagen: Beach park is city’s recreational oasis

Astrid Svane — Mon, 31 May 2010 07:22:59 +0000

Copenhagen Municipal Council examined the possibility of establishing a decent beach park on the Øresund coast south of the city in as early as the 1970s. The original Amager Beach park, which had existed as a city beach since the 1930s was too narrow, and the water was too shallow. The new Amager Beach stretches from the Helgoland bathing facility in the North to Kastrup Fort and ”Tiøren” Park to the south. The park consists of a beach along Amager Strandvej, a lagoon, a new sandy island and the Tiøren and Femøren parks.

Curitiba: The Green Capital

Sidsel Overby Hartlev — Fri, 28 May 2010 07:10:31 +0000

With a network of almost 30 parks and urban forested areas, Curitiba is the greenest capital in southern Brazil. Back in 1970, each of the city's inhabitants had less than 1 m² of green area. A goal-directed effort has since boosted this area to 52 m² per inhabitant and the city is still actively improving its natural environment. In 2007, Curitiba came third on the list of the 15 Green Cities in the World in the American magazine Grist.

Copenhagen: Urban gardens liven up Ørestad

Maria Nørlyng Leal — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:49:59 +0000

The association's ambition for 'Ørestad Urban Gardens' is: City dwellers should have the opportunity to grow their own organic vegetables and experience how food gets from the soil to the dinner table. At the same time the gardens must bring verdant life to Copenhagen's new district of Ørestad on Amager, which is still characterised by open spaces and buildings under construction.

Odense: Rubbish tip transformed into an oasis

Maria Nørlyng Leal — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:12:07 +0000

Much has happened on Stige Ø since Odense Municipal Council began the transformation from a rubbish tip to a recreational oasis for the inhabitants of Denmark's third-largest city in 1994. A metre-thick layer of earth was spread across the entire island to limit pollution from the area. Despite the fact that the buried rubbish still impacts on the environment, Odense Municipal Council has succeeded in creating an area of natural beauty with a lot of potential for physical activity.

Stuttgart: Cool city

Astrid Svane — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:20:48 +0000

Stuttgart is a city well known for its industrial productivity and affluence, and is often referred to as Germany’s ‘cradle of the automobile’. With this profile, one might expect a city littered with glass office buildings, stark urban plazas and with heavy traffic clogging its arteries.

London: Insects up high

Maria Nørlyng Leal — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 08:25:16 +0000

Over the next three years, the Living Roofs for Wildlife project will install a total of six living roofs in central London. The roofs will eventually be part of a vegetation network that will ensure the survival of the city's bumblebees, butterflies, insects and birds. The project is focusing on the brown-banded carder bee (Bombus humilis) and the black redstart (Phoenicurus ochruros). Both species are threatened and their habitats are rapidly being disrupted with the expansion of urban areas and the intensification of farming.

New York: From high line to park

Maria Nørlyng Leal — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:52:16 +0000

From the 1930s the former industrial area in southwest Manhattan was served by an elevated railway, built to reduce the risk of fatal transport accidents at ground level. The line closed in 1980, since when it has been unused. Local property owners endeavored to have the railway leveled with the ground, while a group of committed inhabitants, the Friends of the High Line, have been fighting since 1999 to have the old railway opened as a public recreation area.

London: 2,012 vegetable gardens by 2012

Anna Esbjørn Hess — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:43:26 +0000

London of the UK will be the focus of the world’s attention between July and September 2012, when the city will host the 30th of the International Olympic Games. The city has placed sustainability at the heart of its bid for the event and The London 2012 Sustainability Plan has been produced to illustrate how such a bid will be carried out on time.

Chicago: Converting vacant lots to greenery

Kit Sand Ottsen — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:35:35 +0000

Chicago's tradition of parks and boulevards has provided the city with a stunning lakefront and its motto "Urbs in Horto" or "City in a Garden." However, the city's growth over time has left new and changing neighbourhoods without sufficient open space. In 1993, analysis concluded that the city failed to provide recreation resources equally to all residents; 63 % of Chicagoans lived in neighbourhoods where parks were either too crowded or too far away. A detailed study of the whole city inventoried open land and found a surprising number of vacant parcels available.

Augustenborg: Green roofs and storm water channels

Kit Sand Ottsen — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:55:04 +0000

In 1998, the Augustenborg district in Malmo, Sweden, initiated an extensive renovation under the name of 'Ekostaden'. The neighbourhood, which consists of low-rise apartment buildings from the 1950s, was very popular when it was first constructed. However, due to poor maintenance, many of these original occupants have moved out over the years and left the area dilapidated, economically challenged, and socially deprived. Recently, Malmo Municipality and the housing company MKB have cooperated in an attempt to regain the area’s original status.