C11 - Greenstructures and urban planning

The main objective of the Action was to reach a better understanding of the role played by planning, design and management in the interactions between green and built-up areas, improving the way green areas contribute to the quality of life of urban citizen, to the quality of habitats as a basis for biodiversity and to other aspects of sustainable urban development.

This topic needed a multidisciplinary approach, due to the diverse qualities and uses of green-structures, for human leisure, habitats for plants and animals, microclimate conditions, flows control, space organisation.

Each meeting was an opportunity for technical visits and open seminars with local experts. The Final Seminar in Ceske Budejovice (CZ) in December 2004 gave the opportunity to discuss these results with new experts, some of them coming from the cities, which had hosted previous meetings. This seminar was also a starting point for dissemination.
Participants to the Final Seminar recognised a number of concrete gaps (mainly linked to lack of legislative tools for the use of urban and suburban green structures for citizens’ well-being) in the existing planning schemes and decided to use the established network for preparation of a new proposal for a research project, either within the EU Framework Programme or in COST, focused on solutions of these problems.