The aim is to develop realistic indicators to evaluate, manage and develop performant GBIs in cities and intensively managed landscapes. UrbanGaia explicitly focusses on analysis of ecological and socio-economic features of the many existing GBIs within a place-based and socio-ecological research framework. The project consists of three main approaches which converge in a transdisciplinary analysis of GBI performance: ecological science, political economic analysis and stakeholder co-creation.
In the second part of the 20th century, three major challenges led towards a new thinking and the implementation of river restoration as a nature-based solution at the Isar.
First, after decades of river regulation, water diversion and hydro-morphological modifications, the resulting degraded morphological status and related losses of ecological and social quality triggered serious concerns from civil society and citizens.
Second, the Isar River was very popular for swimming and other water-related outdoor recreational activities as one of the key elements of the local...
The Programme for Enhancing the Urban Green Infrastructure is an ambitious government measure approved in 2017. It establishes the main strategies for enhancing the quality and quantity of green infrastructure in Barcelona till 2030. Barcelona wants to renature the city and create, in this period, 165 ha of new green spaces, which increases the green spaces/inhabitant ratio by 1m2. As Barcelona is a compact city, there are various strategies to improve, transform or create new green spaces. The actions will take place at various urban scales (street, district or city scale) and...
The release of an open public space with such dimensions in a densely-built city district offered a unique opportunity to restore the connection among the surrounding areas with a solid green lung. The site was previously a brownfield land that needed remediation. (During the entire remediation operation, approximately 100,000 m³ of land was excavated) However, even the residents of the neighboring areas faced with initial skepticism the usefulness of a park in the specific location.
The idea was to have an economically viable park that would function as social space, a space that...
The main objective of our BIOVEINS proposal is to use functional diversity (FD) to highlight the mechanisms underpinning the link between GBI, taxonomic diversity (TD) and ecosystem services (ESs) provisioning, and to provide, together with local stakeholders, the ecological and interdisciplinary knowledge to identify the critical features of GBI, to guide the establishment, management and restoration of GBI, and to mitigate the effects of major urban global challenges, like habitat fragmentation, air pollution, and urban heat island.
This main objective will be accomplished by...