Creating greenery
Adding green to rooftops, walls and streets
Adding green to rooftops, walls and the gaps of the city is itself a major value of farms — improving the landscape, easing the heat-island effect and offering psychological calm.
432 related cases
Cases where this shows up
Ginza Honey Bee Project
JPTokyo, Japan
A citizen project keeping bees on Ginza rooftops to make urban green networks visible. Linked to rooftop gardens and local food culture, it helped spark urban beekeeping across Japan.
gin-pachi.jp+3
Umeda Honeybee Project
JPOsaka, Japan
Launched Osaka's first urban beekeeping on the rooftop of the Yanmar Building in Umeda's Chayamachi district in March 2010. Rather than honey itself, its aim is promoting local greening through bee pollination and providing food and environmental education. It has expanded with an experience-based apiary in Hattori Ryokuchi park.
u-mitsubachi.com+3
UW Biodiversity Green Wall & Edible Green Screen
USSeattle, United States
A demonstration completed in fall 2012 that turned two concrete walls at the University of Washington's Gould Hall into urban habitat, combining a biodiversity green wall, an edible green screen, and rainwater harvesting. Roof-collected rainwater irrigates hop and kiwi vines, demonstrating reduced energy use, heat-island mitigation, and increased urban biodiversity.
sustainability.uw.edu+1
Sobuj Dhaka Rooftop Gardens
BDDhaka, Bangladesh
A rooftop greening and urban agriculture program run by Bangladesh's agriculture extension agency to green and feed the dense city of Dhaka
unb.com.bd+1
Hakata Honeybee Project
JPFukuoka, Japan
A Fukuoka (Hakata) based NPO devoted to urban beekeeping and public outreach about honeybees. Under the motto that a town where bees fly is a good town, it keeps bees on building rooftops and other sites, drawing attention to the city's vanishing nature and linking people with nature and their community.
seibutsutayousei.city.fukuoka.lg.jp+3
Nagoya Maruhachi Honeybee Project
JPNagoya, Japan
An urban-beekeeping NPO based in Naka-ku, Nagoya, formed in the wake of the 2010 Convention on Biological Diversity COP10 held in Nagoya. It keeps bees on a rooftop in the Nishiki district to raise interest in biodiversity and the environment through downtown beekeeping.
maruhachi-project.com+2
Supporting research
Nature-based cooling potential: a multi-type green infrastructure evaluation in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
A controlled field study in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, evaluated the impact of multiple types of green infrastructure on near-surface air temperature regulation. Over two summers, a field campaign measured the impact of green roofs, green walls, urban vegetation and forestry systems, and urban agriculture systems on near-surface air temperature. This study demonstrated that multiple types of green infrastructure applications are beneficial in regulating near-surface air temperature and are not limited to specific treatments.
Vidya Anderson, William A. Gough · 2021 · International Journal of Biometeorology
Meanings
This chapter examines the multi-layered social construction of "ambivalent landscapes" in wild green spaces, connecting them to concepts like age-value in heritage conservation and guerrilla gardening. It argues that plant-built assemblages offer novel imaginations of urban nature and contribute to environmental justice. The chapter also explains that the isolation of spontaneous nature on buildings from a city's metabolic processes makes it difficult to value as green infrastructure, yet microsites of wild vegetation hold potential for greening resource-scarce neighborhoods.
Amartya Deb · 2023 · dx.doi.org
Using constructed soils for green infrastructure – challenges and limitations
This review examines the use of Constructed Technosols (CTs), mixtures of organic and mineral waste, for green infrastructure (GI) in urban spaces. While CTs have high potential to provide multiple soil functions and contribute to urban greening, urban soils are often physically, chemically, or biologically unsuitable for GI features. The analysis suggests that the composition and structure of CTs should be adapted to available wastes and by-products, as well as future land use and environmental conditions, highlighting the need for careful design to overcome existing limitations.
Maha Deeb, Peter M. Groffman, Manuel Blouin et al. · 2020 · SOIL
Effectiveness of plants and green infrastructure utilization in ambient particulate matter removal
This review presents the effectiveness of plants and green infrastructure in ambient particulate matter (PM) removal. It describes the mechanisms of PM capture by plants and factors influencing PM reduction in the atmosphere. The review refers to the effectiveness of plant utilization in various forms of green infrastructure, including trees, grasslands, green roofs, living walls, water reservoirs, and urban farming. Additionally, methods to increase PM removal by plants, such as species selection, biodiversity increase, PAH-degrading phyllospheric endophytes, transgenic plants, and microorganisms, are presented.
K. Wróblewska, Byoung Ryong Jeong · 2021 · Environmental Sciences Europe