It is estimated that by the year 2050 around 70% of the entire world’s population will be living in cities, meaning 2.5 billion more people than are doing so today! In many developed nations around the world, about three out of four people are already living in urban areas. Unfortunately, it turns out that this trend is not going well for human health and well-being, and we are beginning to see the consequences. Research shows that around nine million people a year are dying early from toxic air pollution, a very tragic figure! Fortunately, cities are beginning to take measures to counteract these alarming results!
One of the most promising of these initiatives is the greening of urban areas, bringing nature back into the city to make them healthier and more liveable. Research clearly shows that human beings require nature in our surroundings. We need to have trees in our streets, sidewalk gardens full of plants, and flowers growing on our balconies. One great new way to accomplish this important goal is the construction of vertical gardens that transform blank wall space into lush greenery! Instead of walking past faceless stone and steel, you will have beautiful oxygen-giving plants towering above you!
Having green spaces in our cities helps to mitigate the negative effects of air pollution by forming a natural filter that absorbs and disposes of contaminates so we don’t have to breathe them. The presence of living plants also reduces the urban heat island effect, a phenomenon in which heat is trapped in built-up areas. Urban heat islands form in our towns and cities as a direct result of human activity.
Large masses of people, transportation, shops, and industry all generate heat that becomes trapped by concrete structures and narrow streets, where it is unable to naturally escape up into the atmosphere. These heat islands can raise the temperature in urban areas more than 4°C higher than the open countryside beyond, which puts a vicious cycle into motion!
Summertime’s higher temperatures always lead to an increase in the demand for air-conditioned cooling. This greatly expands our consumption of energy, which then leads to an intensification of fossil fuel use, causing even more pollutants to enter our air and form hazardous clouds of smog over our streets.
The heat absorbed in city pavements causes damage to the water cycle as summer surface temperatures rise to be a sweltering 50°C hotter than the surrounding air! All that heat is then transferred to rainwater, which then drains into the sewers, causing dangerously high water temperatures when it flows out into streams, rivers, lakes, and the ocean. These high temperatures are highly destructive to aquatic ecosystems, as unnaturally high human-made water temperatures bleach corals, starve fish of oxygen, and ultimately prove fatal for marine and aquatic life.
Redesigning our cities to include more green spaces is an important step in making our urban areas healthier for human life. The presence of soil, plants and greenery in our cities helps reduce surface temperatures and reduces the amount of energy required to air condition buildings, creating a sustainable, healthy future for all of us.
