The Hague celebrated the official opening of Wijkpark Cromvliet and the Urban Waterbuffer together with residents, project partners and municipal officials. The park has even been nominated for a prestigious national award, the Deltacongres Zonnetje. Even though fellow nominee Hedwigepolder won, the nomination resulted in a lot of positive attention for the Urban Waterbuffer.

Meanwhile, The Hague is working on a second GI pilot; the greening of a small square parallel to the Van Musschenbroekstraat. This project’s design has recently been subjected to the Business Model, as part of the ‘demonstrator testing’.

The Launchpad design is now finalised following an exercise to ensure the building is future-proofed against pandemics. The Green Infrastructure incorporated in the design supports Southend Borough Council in its aspirations for the innovation centre to achieve BREEAM and Well v2 accreditations. Construction will start in February 2021. In the meantime, Marijke Geukens from the University of Antwerp has started work on utilising the pilot to test the Business Model.

This planting season, Lille municipality plans to add even more trees to their urban forest. In the streets where cables and pipes leave no space for tree roots, façade gardens are being planted.

Construction works are in full swing. The first street (of four) has been paved with water permeable stones. Wadi’s are being constructed and trees planted.

The 2021-22 planting season is a busy time in Cambridge. As well as 400 new trees which will be planted in public open spaces, we will be giving away 260 trees to residents through the Free Trees for Babies scheme and another 100 trees to residents in the city’s Arbury ward through our Neighbourhood Canopy Campaign. There is also a mass tree planting event taking place at Logan’s Meadow with a local community group which will see 250 new trees planted.

Through our partnership with Trees for Streets, residents across the city (and even globally) are busy providing extra finance to plant more trees in the city too through this innovative sponsorship scheme. This partnership has also provided funding to plant 26 trees to acknowledge the United Nations Climate Conference taking place in Glasgow – COP26. In March we will have a ceremonial tree planting on Queen’s Green with the Lord Lieutenant for Cambridge as part of Her Majesty’s ‘Queen’s Green Canopy’ initiative to mark the upcoming Platinum Jubilee. Finally, we have established a discount voucher scheme for Cambridge city residents with Ashridge Trees Ltd., whereby city residents can claim a 20% discount off trees and hardy shrubs to encourage the planting of more trees in privately owned gardens across the city.

The public consultation round has brought a lot of positive feedback from the residents. The city has answered all remarks and questions. The design team is now ready to draw up the final design taking resident feedback into account.

Permeable paths and water buffering ponds are now in use at 7 different locations in the Zuidrand region. The results have been so positive, that one of the local municipalities decided to add even more permeable pavement.

The city of Mortsel will pave the 1000m3 square in front of their town hall with permeable stones and take additional water infiltration measures.