Green Spaces for Sustainable Cities, Citygreen Issue 6

CITYGREEN, winner of the APEX Awards for Publication Excellence for three consecutive years - 2014, 2013 and 2012, is a biannual publication of the Centre for Urban Greenery & Ecology, Singapore. It presents current research on greening and ecology of the urban environment, and features outstanding green projects in international cities. This issue of CITYGREEN aims to share insights on the values of nature in cities.

While Dr. Jason Byrne discusses alternatives to greenspace planning in contrast to the traditional standards approach, Geoff Dyer describes the model SmartCode for achieving walkable, mixed-use urbanism, and Dr. Peter Fisher and D. Trainham illustrate how buildings can be reconnected to the natural world through a "naturising index".

The issue also highlights the cities that have been named European Green Capitals by the European Commission in its annual competition to reward and encourage local governments that have taken the environment into account in urban planning and management, as well as a number of noteworthy projects with significant sustainability goals, including the international London 2012 Olympic Parklands and Public Realm (cited "Europe's most significant landscape for 150 years"to last a generation) and Housing Development Board's neighbourhood park Greenwood Sanctuary @ Admiralty in Singapore.

These technical articles are balanced with more personal interviews and essays. Photographer Jonathan Fleming refl ects on his experience of "walking the High Line", while landscape designer Jane Martin, whose founding work at Plant*SF gained the support of San Francisco City's mayor to introduce permeable landscaping along its streets, shares her journey and motivation. In an excerpt from Dr. Timothy Beatley's article in the The Nature of Cities blog, he suggests how thinking about the Nature Pyramid, a tool similar to the Nutrition Pyramid, may help us to better determine the necessary amounts of exposure to nature and outdoor natural environments.

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