Breathing walls A green space for residents on building facades (China, Beijing-Peking)
Luma Landscaping Services Eco-shaping communities together (Canada, Edmonton)
Public-private garden Greening and environmental service (China, Guangzhou-Canton)
Fish, mulberry and field A greening service linked to tradition (China, Changsha)
Symbiotic nature Symbiotic nature is a combination of parks, gardens, greenhouses and urban vegetable plots stretching throughout and over the city: “nature” which depends on human beings and their care for its survival.
Urban greenery6 is both a natural and a social resource, which must be considered principally in relation to the configuration of the city. Its existence holds physical and psychological implications for the individual citizen, and social and environmental implications for the overall community. There is a relationship between the quality and quantity of vegetation in an urban environment and the physical and psychological health of its inhabitants. It has also been demonstrated how vegetation increases energy efficiency in buildings, reducing demand for air conditioning in the summer, and improving the city microclimate by avoiding overheating and making the streets and squares more liveable and inviting. For all these reasons the decline in urban greenery should be seen as one of the most important factors in the intrinsic unsustainability of the city.
Proposals » Devise systems of urban vegetation able to meet residents’ “demand for nature”, which also
influences the microclimate both indoors and out, improving inhabitability and reducing the energy consumed in air conditioning. » Develop urban vegetation suitable to the local climate and living patterns, able to integrate with densely populated built up areas. Exploit the spaces between buildings and vertical and horizontal structures, using the most advanced cultivation and monitoring technology for its maintenance.
Characteristics 6 Urban greenery all forms of vegetable life that populate the city. It is described in terms of its size, its quality and its forms of management.
The focus of interest in this perspective, which we call symbiotic nature, is obviously to make the city more liveable and, by so doing, regenerate the social and environmental living contexts of its residents. However, since an intense, appropriate use of vegetation improves the microclimate both inside and around buildings, it is also interesting to think of urban vegetation as a sort of “vegetable air conditioning system”: a refined bio-technical system for cooling and purifying air, which works on 99 ı SUSTAINABLE EVERYDAY