Martha Davies sheds light on the eco-conscious town-planning initiative progressing around world.
Photo by Charles Parker
With traffic and pollution becoming a critical issue around the world, numerous cities are turning to ‘Green Streets’ as a way of increasing vegetation, filtering contaminated water, and revitalising urban areas.
Against the sombre backdrop of the climate crisis, commitment to this community-orientated, eco-friendly method of town planning is a welcome effort in forging a brighter future.
The term ‘Green Street’ refers to an approach to stormwater management that aims to reduce the amount of pollutants carried into rivers by capturing rainwater rather than directing it into sewers and gutters. This can be done using plant beds and trees, permeable pavements, and rain gardens, which absorb water from rooftops and other surfaces, ensuring that rivers remain clean and flood risks are reduced.
As well as improving water quality, Green Streets also promote more environmentally-friendly lifestyles by shifting the focus from cars to methods of transport like walking and cycling. They can even include features such as energy-efficient street lights, helping to scale down the carbon footprint of areas themselves.
Widespread Change
The benefits of Green Streets are innumerable and difficult to deny. Not only do they help to cut down air pollution, they also enhance the urban environment and improve quality of life. They represent a step towards dismantling the automobile-obsessed lifestyle of those living in cities and enabling vital cuts to carbon emissions which will slow the already-irreparable damage of the climate crisis.
Green Streets have been used by many smaller communities as a way of encouraging wildlife in urban areas and creating healthier lifestyles for residents, while also curtailing issues of vandalism and graffiti. Designing and creating Green Streets allows communities to come together to improve their local areas and help the environment.
This has been picked up on by politicians and city planners in much larger areas – over thirty major cities across the world have pledged to rid streets of fossil fuels by 2030 in a bid to tackle pollution and drastically reduce emissions.
Barcelona has hit the headlines by committing to the Green Streets scheme, declaring that one in three streets in the extremely polluted district of Eixample will become green zones, prioritising pedestrians and cyclists. Barcelona’s plan also includes the creation of 21 public squares to realign the city’s focus from cars and busy roads to eco-friendly urban areas for use by surrounding communities. Green Streets in Barcelona will be rolled out as an addition to the ‘superblocks’ scheme, announced in 2016, which involves the grouping of nine city blocks so as to discourage car use, as well as increasing the numbers of cycle lanes, and replacing parking spaces with public seating.
COVID-19 and Beyond
With the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic earlier this year, the need for open spaces suddenly became an urgent issue. Looking forward, however, it is clear that elements such as wider pavements and cycle lanes are hugely positive both for the environment and for general wellbeing.
Green Streets have the added focus of regulating water quality, making them a superb method of tackling multiple forms of pollution. Both as small community projects and as changes to street design in much larger cities, Green Streets help to reconnect us with the environment and allow us to make our own contribution to tackling climate change.
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