Urban Green Belts – Smart integrated models for sustainable management of urban green spaces for creating more healthy and liveable urban environments

Living in a large city to have a park or garden right on your doorstep is such an advantage most property seekers are looking for. Such greens offer you an improved life quality. They not only provide leisure or sports facilities but make the air cleaner, reduce urban noise and even improve the urban climate. Yet if they are not in a good shape they can easily turn into a burden and a constant “battlefield” between inhabitants and the responsible authorities.
Green belts, often spreading over a number of smaller settlements around big cities, are the “lungs” of these densely populated cities that can provide various environmental, social and economic benefits. To achieve these, however, traditional authority approaches are no longer enough and efficient. So how these green spaces could be managed smartly through cooperation of inhabitants and various authorities, using also 21st century tools will be in the focus of Urban Green Belts. There is a common demand for better functioning operational models in Central Europe, yet project partners would not have the capabilities to develop a complex novel system on their own. Through improving capacities of all actors via this joint work, management of urban green spaces will become more efficient and a more integrated part of environmental management systems. This will also lead to an enhanced biodiversity, improved air quality, less urban noise, more bearable urban heat waves and a generally improved quality of urban life.
Urban Green Belt partners from 7 countries will develop innovative methods and tools (based on applying Green Infrastructure, community involvement and multi-level governance concepts) leading to integrated models for managing urban green spaces smartly. How these novel solutions work will be tested jointly through pilot actions and compiled into a Manual to serve as guidance on reforming green spaces management for any public authority in Europe for the benefit of inhabitants.R 3.3 Status of integrated environmental managment capacities of the public sector and related entities in functional urban areas achieved through transnational cooperation for making them more liveable places.Public authorities cooperating in the project will gain sound expertise on how to exploit the various environmental, social and economic benefits of urban green spaces and how to create a cooperation platform integrating all related stakeholders so as to manage UGS more effectively and sustainably and thus improve the environmental performance of their FUA. By adapting the Green Infrastructure approach decision-makers will get committed to integrate management of green spaces into the local/regional environmental management system and to channel the issue into spatial planning & development policies. By establishing a systematic co-working between public bodies from all levels and relevant non-governmental stakeholders within FUAs and involving community groups into co-creation & maintenance processes, financial, organisational & human public capacities related to UGS management will be significantly improved. Advanced UGS management will result in overarching advantages for the urban environment and environmental performance of FUAs’ via enhancing biodiversity, improving air quality, reducing ambient noise, mitigating heat waves, preventing floods and for the overall quality of urban life including human health and well-being. As innovative solutions will be consciously developed with a replicable character, knowledge transfer through (trans)national networks will enable FUA authorities also beyond the partnership to adapt the results.