Green Infrastructures Driven to Tackle Sustainable Development Goals into European Urban Areas

Abstract

The increase in urban population concentrated in a reduced spatial area, combined with landscape change (removal of natural areas of vegetation) cause significant environmental pressures with severe effects, which have been getting worse given the current context of climate change (e.g. increased urban heat island effect, urban floods that oppose to significant dry periods). As such, and to mitigate harmful effects from landscape changes, several EU agreements and protocols have been developed and published, from a perspective of environmental protection, sustainable and resilient development of cities. The benefits provided by urban green infrastructures (NbS) have been widely publicized and this type of technologies are a key element to overcome some of the current urban challenges. Nevertheless, NbS strategies are diverse, and each solution must be carefully designed and selected according to the objective to be achieved. A careful planning is therefore essential when trying to implement and endow cities with a more natural and resilient configuration. The implementation of green roofs and/or vertical gardens are an example of NbS that can be applied at a local scale within cities centres, with the advantage to be implemented at the building level and, therefore, not requiring using useful soil area. In addition, the implementation of NbS contributes to the achievement of the European Green Deal and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 11 and 13, of the United Nations 2030 Agenda. However, there is still no legal political coordination at EU level that would oblige investment in these NbS. Thus, urban guidelines and legislation must be developed to make the integration of vegetation in urban planning and design a mandatory solution.