Concrete jungle: Push to grow more green spaces across Sydney

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Sydney has recently become home to the biggest green wall installation in Australia, amid a wider campaign to green the cityscape.

Currently 15.5 per cent of Sydney is blanketed in green canopy, but the city council wants to increase coverage to 23.5 per cent by 2030.

There are similar campaigns in other Australian capitals and an even wider global trend to boost the number of green spaces in urban centres.

Green roofs and walls project officer at City of Sydney council, Lucy Sharman, says the city is on track to reach its green canopy target, but more green roofs and walls need to be installed.

"There is an absolute fascination with green roofs and walls at the moment," she said.

Green stats by city Melbourne 23 per cent canopy coverage (40 per cent target by 2040)

87 green roofs in Victoria in 2011

10-20 green walls in central Melbourne

77,000 trees - 15,000 planted since 2008 Sydney 15.5 per cent canopy coverage (23.5 per cent target by 2030)

More than 75 green roofs and walls

Greenery covers an area the size of 4.5 football fields

42,000 trees - 8,500 planted since 2008 Brisbane 51 per cent green canopy coverage

Two million trees planted between 2008-2012

"Green walls started to go in in the 1930s... but in the last 10 years there's been around almost a 70 per cent increase in green roofs and walls."

Ms Sharman receives at least one development application every week with a green roof or wall incorporated in the design.

She says it is a human response to increased density and urbanisation.

"The more population that comes to Sydney and to Melbourne and to Brisbane and to those big cities, the more we have to think creatively about our open space," she said.

"It's the developers' response too... because there's a realisation that people love that, they feel better around greenery."

The City of Sydney council says green roofs and walls can lower temperatures in a building by around two degrees and help to offset the urban heat island effect in the CDB.

Other benefits include cleaning and slowing stormwater runoff, improving air quality in the immediate vicinity and attracting wildlife.

But Ms Sharman says cost is a major boundary to installing green roofs and walls, and the council is in the process of conducting a hard cost-benefit analysis.

"One of the biggest barriers to people putting in green walls is really understanding the how much is it actually going to cost... and exactly what benefits am I going to get out of it," she said.

Vertical gardens

The biggest green wall installation of its type has recently been opened in Chippendale, just 500 metres from Sydney's central station.

One Central Park, which has just been opened to residents this week, is covered in green panels that cover an area of 1,000 square metres.

The outer walls are also lined with tens of thousands of planters measuring five kilometres in length.

Design partner and architect, Bertram Beissel, says a project of this scale has never been done before.

"I don’t think there's another high rise that tall that is so structurally transformed by the presence of these plants," he said.

The green panels are three to four metres wide and the longest spans across 14 stories.

"Instead of fabricating some mechanical shading device made of aluminium or steel... why not use solar energy, the sun, and grow these shades," he said.

"We should be exploring these things, we should be trying to harness and master these forces of nature."

The greenery is also expected to increase the value of the apartments.

"Think of every major city in the world, every time you have a Hyde Park or a Central Park, the real estate value just increases immensely," he said.

"Everybody wants to live there."

There is evidence to suggest that the external vegetation will help regulate temperatures inside the building and therefore reduce the cost of air conditioning.

But project director Mick Caddey says that's not the primary reason they were installed.

Mr Caddey says green walls and roofs are also about long-term liveability and social sustainability.

"The green walls themselves don't really add to substantially to the environmental savings of the project," he said.

"We looked at the broader objective of how do we green up Central Park, both an environmental objective but also in a community and beautification and a long-term sustainability strategy."

The greenery is also a visual expression for more significant environmental projects that are out of sight, including a gas-fired tri-generation plant and a water recycling plant that are both built underneath the precinct.

Measuring the benefits

University of Technology Sydney (UTS) sustainability expert Professor Stuart White says green walls and roofs are good for the environment, but there needs to be more take up before major environmental benefits are realised.

"It's not going to transform the air quality issues of Sydney but it is an important contributor," he said.

"If we look toward the future, 20 or 30 years' time, and we hope we'd see a lot more of these.

"Then, it would start to make a significant difference to the urban heat island effect, the microclimates, but also to the thermal efficiency of buildings."

Professor White helped create the precinct's sustainability strategy.

He says the development is an example for future developments and private projects.

"People need to become aware that it is possible to have buildings... that are both comfortable, look good, but tread lightly on the planet," he said.

Professor White says the financial gains of green roofs and walls can be difficult to measure, but there are other benefits that are harder still to quantify.

"There's a lot of evidence to suggest that it actually improves wellbeing to green the city areas."

"We've recently passed the point where more than 50 per cent of the people in the world live in cities and people have a hunger for beautiful places," he said.

Lucy Sharman echoes the sentiments.

"It's really a no-brainer that when you are around greenery, you feel better," she said.

"Gardening and greenery is a common language that breaks down barriers of language, of age, of cultural differences."

The value of green spaces

One man who knows the value of green spaces is Alan Claremont, who has been tending to a rooftop garden atop the Wayside Chapel in Potts Point for two years.

Prior to that he lived on trains and suffered from depression, before getting help and support from the staff at the drop-in centre.

He says looking after the garden has helped to play a part in transforming his outlook on life.

It’s really a no-brainer that when you are around greenery, you feel better. Lucy Sharman

"This was all a new area for me and it was fantastic to plant, to mix up soil... and to watch things grow," he said.

"It gives me an interest which is absolutely fantastic, it's much better than looking down a tunnel."

The garden is an important part of Wayside's day-to-day living program for people with long-term mental illness.

The fruit, vegetable and herbs grown in the garden are used to feed people in the centre.

Wayside's community building program manager, Wendy Suma, says the garden adds to the building's overall sustainability, but is about much more than that.

"You can come up here and it's beautiful and it's quiet and you can see the growth of things," she said.

"It's more about the people working in it than the food we grow here.

"Simply to work together to create something that they love and know that they've done together is what it's really all about."

Topics: environmentally-sustainable-business, environmental-impact, environmental-technology, environmental-policy, sydney-2000

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