Urban green infrastructure and forests for cool cities: building actions from evidence

Cities and urban lifestyles are not only a major cause of climate change, but are also strongly threatened by increasing heat, heavy rainfall and river flooding.
Green spaces can help to overcome the challenges of climate change.
To this end, green networks with diverse ecological and social benefits are to be developed as green infrastructure.
Urban development will require a transformation of open spaces such as streets and squares in order to achieve this goal in densely built-up city centres.
Trees play a central role here, as they provide shade and cool through evapotranspiration.
Old trees in particular are almost impossible to replace and therefore deserve special protection.
At the same time, however, growing cities are becoming ever more densely built-up, jeopardising green spaces and their role in climate change adaptation.
The “Green City of the Future” project shows that integrative planning with comprehensive public participation is required in order to develop an efficient green infrastructure, even in densely built-up urban neighbourhoods, and to resolve spatial conflicts with other concerns such as road traffic.
Green infrastructure must be considered at an early stage, comprehensively and across all planning phases and levels as a high-priority objective.

III International Symposium on Greener Cities: Improving Ecosystem Services in a Climate-Changing World (GreenCities2024)

S. Pauleit

climate change adaptation, urban trees, ecosystem services, densification, integrated planning, public participation

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2025.1429.4