Network of Green Areas within Collective Housing Communities - Case Study from Timişoara, Romania

Abstract

Green areas have always been an essential feature of urban developments, improving the quality of life within a community, both from a social perspective – offering residents a place for relaxation and interaction, as well as from the point of view of disease prevention – improving the overall air quality, but also encouraging inhabitants to spend more time outside. The importance of these areas within a settlement further increases in the present-day context, in which the constant expansion of cities in their surrounding territory, phenomenon known as “urban sprawl”, gradually eliminates the natural green spaces and agricultural terrains from our landscape. This trend has devastating effects on the environment, as well as on the micro-climate of our settlements, characterized, in recent years, by the formation of heat islands within the built tissue. Moreover, the disappearance of natural green areas leads to the constant estrangement of the inhabitants, and especially of young generations, from the natural values and realities.It is thus more important than ever to ensure an adequate percentage of green areas for our cities, uniformly distributed within the urban tissue. Green belts, urban forests, parks, green squares or even urban gardens – all these entities play their parts within the urban green network, having certain radiuses of influence and attraction and thus occupying a specific position within the urban hierarchy. In Romania, the terrains left un-built between the collective housing buildings – or apartment blocks, erected during the communist administration and currently constituting public property, have a huge potential regarding the matter of urban greenery, being easily transformed into active and qualitative green areas.However, the local authorities lack the resources (both financial and in terms of human resources) to efficiently develop and then administrate these areas, which are consequently either abandoned, or used as illegal parking lots. This paper therefore explores the possibilities in which the terrains between collective housing buildings can be exploited by the community and transformed into qualitative green areas, as well as their integration within the hierarchy of the existing green network.