The Urban Jungle

Hello again everyone J I do plan on this blog becoming more consistent with how often posts are released and I had planned that from the beginning but shortly after I posted the first two posts life got busy and I just didn’t have the time.

Now to this post. This is going to be a weird one because it is more of an idea that I had in my head than anything which may be plausible.

I logged into my laptop today, and with Windows 10 you get pictures in the background with a quote about the picture, and the picture was a typical picture of a city with lightning flashing across the sky. What really struck me though was the quote that went with the picture which read something along the lines of “Even the urban jungle has greenspace”. Looking at the picture I couldn’t actually see any green space but it got me thinking though. It got me thinking about how many times I’ve heard the term “urban jungle” and yet I have never actually thought about comparing a city to a jungle because they are two different things. The city is filled with towering buildings made of greys, browns and reds with the occasional flourishes of colour. The jungle has towering trees made of mainly red and brown woods with some grey and the occasional flourishes of colour of plants and flowers. The biggest difference between the two though is that the Jungle is largely green from all the leaves.

“Greenspace” in terms of a human environment are areas of green plants that offer tiny refuges for wildlife and help to break up the dullness of the urban jungle. By no means are these green spaces very big and to be honest they aren’t good enough; the current legislation here in the UK doesn’t say that we need to build natural greenspaces except in cases such as the Thames basin heath which is a piece of legislation from the EU protecting the area as a key example of heathland. In this case when building near the Heath the builders have to make an area of suitable area of natural greenspace (SANG) in order to mitigate the damage from the increased footfall from the new residents on the heathland. This should be done though for every single building development though and it should be to create an area that is the equivalent size to what’s being built, but that is something for me to talk about on a different post.

Anyway, getting back to the post at hand, you can think of a city like New York which has a green space called central park. It is a big area of greenspace within the city but it can’t really turn a city into a jungle; it is just not enough green. I ask you then, what if we could turn a city into a jungle?

What if we could make cities green, not just in an environmental sense but in actual colours?

Take a look at the picture below, it’s a 50m² area of an average city from above. It’s a road with buildings to each side, you can’t see any green in it and whilst walking along the streets probably the only green you would see is the green of someone’s clothes or a car.

After reading the quote from windows I thought what if on the roofs of all of those buildings we planted trees and other plants? Soon the streets would look like this and the city would be green from above.

Then what if we started covering walls in plants? This idea has already been done and the works look amazing but they are on a single wall in an endless city. What if every wall was covered in plants? Imagine being able to walk through a city where everything is green with brilliant colours littered all over from flowers growing in every corner of the city. The urban jungle no longer just an “urban jungle” but an actual jungle. Imagine flying over a jungle and the green just never ends and you can’t tell where the jungle ends and the city starts.

I will admit that this is an idea and I would have no idea on the logistics of how this would work out but I think it would be a great idea. It can also be adopted for more rural areas with houses being covered in trees as well. Now let us say that we were building a house in a field: if we were to dig up a 20m² plot we lose 20m² of plant life and habitat but if the roof of the house was covered in plants then the net loss on plants would be close to zero. I will say in this example some animals cannot use the area as habitat anymore but some animals such as birds will still be able to use it.

Next I feel this would be a good idea with the impending doom of climate change knocking on our doorway because the new plants will help in the reduction of our carbon footprint. The plants that we grow could also be plants that are beneficial to us as resources without having to take resources from the environment.

There is the aesthetic appeal to think about because with walls covered in plants you do lose the architectural value of some buildings but in my personal opinion I would prefer to see wildlife flourishing over the architecture. I also think though that we would still be able to keep some buildings unaltered to keep the architectural value and also because I know some buildings are listed and can’t be built on. I also understand that we wouldn’t be able to cover every building in plants because on some city buildings there are helipads and it wouldn’t work to cover them. Even so if every other building was covered in plants that would still be 50 percent of the city turning green.

The last, and possibly best reason, is that every morning you have to go to work you would get to go on a jungle adventure.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read this idea of mine and don’t forget, be a force for change. Heyze.