DEMO 2
Brasov, Romania
The green urban infrastructure (city parks and green areas) from Brașov City have a critical role in reducing air pollution and providing recreational areas for citizens.
Brasov, a city of 300.000 people, is the one of the most polluted city in Romania, even though it is surrounded by forests. Its geographical location favours the stagnation of polluted air, hence the need of healthy green spaces, providing a high quality air filtration service are essential for the city.
Most of the green spaces are built on a 30-40 years old concept/design, without a proper landscape approach, with trees distributed randomly, very few shrub species and many exotic species, which look nice, but do not provide high quality environmental services. Just as for urban green spaces in most cities around the world, the environmental servicing aspect was and is still not considered at all, besides the recreational role. Besides the recreation role and the air filtration service, these green spaces have the potential to provide biodiversity services (improving city biodiversity).
The municipality is open to NBS and keen to improve its green infrastructure, hence Propark is already involved in discussions / initiatives in this direction.
Description of the climate challenge (Data from tool & end user feedback)
With the estimated increase of temperatures because of climate change, the city of Brasov faces the risk of degrading green infrastructure, which will lead to increased levels of air pollution and associated health issues for the population.
Furthermore, present maintenance practices of city parks are very demanding on city resources, especially with the presently selected plant varieties chosen mostly for esthetic values, which need intensive trimming and mowing, watering and other maintenance costs. Growing temperatures will lead to increased costs in maintaining city parks e.g., high watering needs, intensive pest control, costs with replacing species that do not resist to higher temperatures.
Therefore, the NBS recommended through the NATURE-DEMO project would be relevant not only for cities under temperature stress, but also for other cities, especially those under water stress.
The DEMO 2 will provide solutions to improve green infrastructure in cities by using elements provided by the surrounding nature.
Expected results (very briefly, the main ones):
- reduction of water consumption (impact on water supply, energy consumption),
- reduction / elimination of chemicals (impact on soil, ground water),
- healthy plants with high capacity to store carbon and retain dust and noxes from the atmosphere,
- reduction of air pollution through reduced consumption of fossil fuels for maintenance,
- labour costs reduction for maintenance,
- education impact on citizens regarding the importance of NbS.
What we (Propark) already have:
- an online tool for assessing existing green spaces and start the analysis for natural solutions - starting point for the online platform,
- capacity to re-design green spaces and offer nature-based solutions for the test (and replication) areas
- experience in improving/developing or maintaining green spaces, aligned with the NBS concept.
