What role can/showld the green and blue infrastructure have in the city?
This has been the central question of the 10th Počítáme s vodou - Water Matters Conference held in Prague on November 7, with the room of the Paspa's Hall at Potrefena Husa restaurant completely full.
The possibility of creating a new green-blue infrastructure in the city requires a holistic and systemic approach. It is about constituting a true system of interconnected elements and natural spaces that reaches all the neighborhoods of the city. And for this it is necessary to recover space, mainly in the streets, occupied mostly by the car.
That is why the renaturalization of the city requires a change of priorities in public space. This is the idea that gives value to the superblocks strategy and the Green Axes proposal that we presented for Barcelona in 2019: reorganize mobility, prioritize public transport, bicycles and pedestrians to rescue space (asphalt) from the car, to be able to transform it into space for community life but also for the extension of a new environmental infrastructure (green and blue) extended throughout the city.
Although hidden, much of the value of the new green axes of Barcelona as Consell de Cent resides in the subsoil where new conditions have been created:
>in the new green axes there is a new strip in the subuse of plant and structural substrate that has allowed to plant more than 400 new trees and that allows air and water to infiltrate the roots of the trees and at the same time facilitate their growth?
>in each section of green axis there are up to 6 urban sustainable drainage systems (SUDs) that help filter water into the subsoil, and retain water, so that the sewer system does not collapse in cases of torrential rain?
>in the subsoil of Consell de Cent a new pipe was placed to distribute the water from the water table that is extracted from the Glorias tunnel and that in cases of drought like the one we are using to irrigate the urban green instead of consuming mouth water.
References;:
Conference Programme: https://www.pocitamesvodou.cz/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/PSV_2024_Sbornik_150DPI.pdf
