Since the start of the project, Nature Smart Cities’ academic partners work to develop a comprehensive Business Model that helps smaller municipalities to assess the potential impact of a green infrastructure project. This will enable them to compare benefits (and costs) of green scenarios with more traditional lay-outs. Wito van Oijstaeijen, member of the Environmental Economics research group at the University of Antwerp, explains what the Business Model has to offer to local governments and how it works:  

'The interviews with smaller municipalities showed that new housing, less congested roads or more parking space are often prioritized over green infrastructure. The latter is often an ‘add-on’ or afterthought. When a city plans to renovate a road for example, it’s challenging to weigh-up the wide range of benefits of incorporating water buffering capacity or more green space against the initial costs. The goal of the Business Model is to provide civil servants with a more comprehensive evidence base to objectively compare green scenarios with traditional scenarios in the first phase of planning. The Business Model will guide planners to conceptualize and substantiate their ideas, which will lead to higher chances of acceptance in the decision process.

In the example of a street renovation, the additional costs of planting trees, or taking water buffering into account, are obvious. The benefits are much more difficult to prove. That’s where the Business Model can help. Making use of generic data and exemplary cases, the Business Model helps to compare the benefits of different scenarios on a qualitative, quantitative and financial level. The output will be graphically supported and easy to interpret. 

You can’t really put a price on a single tree and then calculate the value of a street lined with trees from there. But we can try to give local decision makers a tool to take a more holistic perspective when planning infrastructure. The Business Model opens up the discussion and helps local authorities to really integrate green infrastructure into urban development.  

We’re developing the business model with the help of generic data. Right now, master students from the University of Ghent and the University of Antwerp help us to gather specific data from the pilot locations. By feeding the Business Model those two different data types and comparing the outcomes, we can see if the assumptions of the Business Model are valid. Hopefully, we will end up with an easy-to-use tool for all those green workers and city planners who need convincing proof that although green infrastructure may initially cost more, it can also yield a much higher return on  investment.’