Green spaces, like apple pie and babies and sunny days, require no explanation. You don’t need a reason to want to spend time in a park, right? You just know you like it.
This is true for all kinds of green spaces: rooftop gardens, creekside trails, rain gardens, even those little pollinator patches on community college campuses or outside office parks.
Nature calls to us, and we respond in body and mind. Also like babies or apple pie, you don’t need to be told that green spaces are good for you … they just are.
Yet at Ecogardens, we hear a lot of concern that with the economy being the way it is (is the economy ever *not* the way it is?), maybe it’s just not the right time to consider an urban beautification project.
So okay, we’ll bite.
Are green spaces really nothing more than urban beautification? Or are there real reasons we need them in our lives and cities? You probably see where we’re going with this, but let’s make a case for them anyway, shall we? Read on.
It’s hard to overstate the benefits of a good urban green space, but here are just a few:
Studies have demonstrated dramatic health benefits associated with green spaces. Biophilia, the idea that humans have an innate love for and magnetic attraction to nature and living things, is a powerful concept in workplace design, helping us feel calmer and happier throughout the day.
Leafy retreats such as green roofs may just be the key to employee happiness, giving people spaces to rest, relax, and recharge for a minute or an hour.
Additionally, green spaces encourage cohesion — whether between neighbors or office mates — and create community gathering points.
The urban heat island effect is a major buzzkill, and it has a firm foothold in America’s cities (and others around the world).
Essentially, it’s the concept that cities are better at collecting heat — thanks to surfaces like asphalt and cement, which are essentially heat sinks. It’s not a perfect metaphor, since heat sinks are meant to discharge heat from the areas they’re protecting (like computer chips), while cities just hold onto it, benefiting nobody.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Cities act as “islands” of high temperatures that increase health problems, heat stroke, asthma, death, electricity use, and water consumption. Compare that to surrounding areas, where temperatures naturally fall at night due to the presence of plants and water.
So how can we fight the urban heat island effect? More plants, more water, both of which green spaces can help us achieve.
One of the biggest benefits that nature brings to our urban areas is stormwater management.
When it isn’t effectively captured during rain or snow events, precipitation becomes runoff, which can overflow sewers and back up storm drains. Unchecked water sheeting across parking lots and streets carries muck, debris, pollution, and disease into unprotected waterways or onto school grounds.
It’s … not good. At all.
Green spaces can help halt that, sucking up rain and snow and discharging it harmlessly in the form of evaporation later. In so doing, it keeps our cities and surrounding ecosystems cleaner.
Intentionally designed rain gardens, green roofs, and retention ponds can create all-natural buffers against precipitation events while looking beautiful at the same time. (Useful and sexy? We should all be so lucky.)
Then, of course, there are the financial benefits of maintaining a green roof or other urban natural space.
The energy savings of a green space are not trifling, believe it or not. Between the insulation provided by soil and the temperature-regulating power of plants, you can:
The right rooftop installation can save you 10-30 percent of your energy bill, according to findings from architecture firms. If that’s not a reason to do a green infrastructure double take, what is?
It’s no real secret that a mature garden can help your home sell for more, but these benefits extend to other types of property as well.
As we’ve discussed in our guide to green roofs, green spaces can increase property values in significant ways. For instance, a rooftop garden may increase the value of a property by up to 11 percent, while that same rooftop garden can confer increases on surrounding properties as well — even those that can’t access it.
That’s power, people.
All well and good, you might be thinking. But green spaces still cost money.
Well, yes. Upfront they do. So do houses and Toyota Highlanders and LEGO Millennium Falcons, and all good things worth having.
Unlike so many things in life for which we’re willing to pay, though, green roofs and other green spaces usually pay themselves back in the form of:
… and a thousand other not-so-intangibles, such as more pollinators, cooler cities, cleaner water, and healthier citizens. (Can your Millennium Falcon do that?)
Best of all, installing them is easier than you might think. All it takes is a little faith and a simple process of designing, building, and stewarding, which is where Ecogardens comes in.
If you’re interested in creating your own green space today, we’re interested in helping. Nay, we would love to help, and we’re proud to have worked with a huge range of customers just like you over the decades, from the city of Chicago to the humblest homeowner.
We want to hear about your project next, because there’s no such thing as planning too soon or building too much green space.
Every little bit counts. All you have to do is get in touch with our team to get started.