New “Revolution” - Green Solutions in Urban Design

Abstract

The urban environment is constantly changing, which results in the depreciation of its natural elements. Progressing urbanization means that a person ceases to perceive larger cities as an attractive place to live or relax, while the city becomes first and foremost a place of work or an economic center. The thing that may change the attitude of the inhabitants to the attractiveness of the environment is green infrastructure. Greenery in the city space plays biological, recreational and aesthetic functions. What is more, it is a habitat for animal life, increases biodiversity, improves air quality and reduces the effects of climate change. Certainly, the preservation of open spaces and greenery is justified, because of the numerous advantages. That is why innovative solutions are applied for the identification, assessment, and planning as well as management of greenery in cities. A relatively new concept, used by the authors during the research, which relates the design and management of green areas to the needs of a better life of inhabitants, is “green livability”. Thus, ecological solutions appear in space based on balancing the expected economic effects in relation to the growing social and environmental needs. The revolution in planning is also increasingly associated with climate change and the migration of the population to a previously unknown scale. This paper presents selected design trends in Poland, Slovakia, and Lithuania, covering green solutions in small scale – including roof gardens, vertical vegetation, rain gardens, community and pocket gardens in cities. In the countries analyzed, there is increasing recognition of the need to change the way of thinking about planning, which results solely from economic or aesthetic needs, towards ecological planning with the participation of society.