New advice to make your city green and resilient through Nature-Based Solutions
The EU project URBAN GreenUP has published a kit with good practices and recommendations to help city administrations, urbanists, city planners and architects implement Nature-based solutions (NBS) in their cities
NBS can mitigate the effects of climate change, improve air quality and water management, and make cities more sustainable. But when designing and implementing them is no walk in the park, the good practices and recommendations collected in the kit come to the rescue, as they cover all the stages of an NBS life cycle, from how to select the right ones for your city, to how to install and monitor them. The book is available for free and can be downloaded here.
The advice in this kit draws on the insights from the European project URBAN GreenUP, that has developed and applied "Renaturing Urban Plans" in various cities across the world. In particular, the project's three frontrunner cities—Valladolid (Spain), Liverpool (UK) and Izmir (Turkey)—have demonstrated a diverse set of large scale and highly replicable NBS. Based on their experience, five follower cities—Mantova (Italy), Ludwigsburg (Germany), Medellin (Colombia), Binh Dinh-Quy Nhon (Vietnam) and Chengdu (China)—have set up their own Renaturing Urban Plans.
These are the good practices displayed in the kit, followed by advises for the best implementation and practical examples brought from the work done by URBAN GreenUP:
· Select NBS that meet your city's needs and abilities
· Map out the challenges your city faces
· Work in a multidisciplinary team
· Combine project design and delivery where possible
· When too many items divide the tendering process
· Use consultants to help with procurement and works
· Incorporate contingency for budgets and delivery
· Take unforeseen expenditure into account
· Allocate resources for NBS maintenance
· Take outdoor conditions into account
· Request legal authorizations from an early stage
· Invest in citizen communication and engagement
· Performance indicators must serve a purpose
· Indicators should be understandable and attainable
FURTHER INFORMATION
URBAN GreenUP is a project funded under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730426. It aims at developing Renaturing Urban Plans, which include actions focused on mitigating the effects and risks of climate change and improving the air quality and water management of cities through NBS. URBAN GreenUP is run by an international consortium of 25 partners from 9 countries, coordinated by the CARTIF Technology Centre. Activities will take place in the three demonstrator cities of Valladolid (Spain), Liverpool (UK) and Izmir (Turkey) and will be replicated across Europe, Latin America and Asia.
Provided by iCube Programme
