Why we need more green spaces in Ireland

Greener cities are on the horizon and its pioneers are the regular citizens of Europe.

A green city, also known as a sustainable city, is an urban area that prioritises sustainability, good air quality, low pollution and accessible spaces for nature. The design and planning of green cities is holistic, meaning social, economic, and environmental impacts are taken into account to ensure the city is sustainably developed for current and future generations.

Green car parks

One primary example of how to ‘green’ a city is to look at what is being unused and transform it into something that is sustainably utilised. Take car parks, for example; despite people complaining that there is never enough space to park a car, most car parks sit empty at least for some portion of the day or week. Car parks of offices are vacant during off-times, parking spaces of homes are empty during work hours.

The valuable space that these empty car parks occupy could be used for much more than simply housing inactive vehicles. According to a study about parking lots in the U.S., even with the added benefit of extra space for cars, car parks have a range of indirect environmental costs, such as an increase in storm runoff which leads to an increase in pollution and flood risks.

In addition to this, car parks with asphalt typically don’t support biological organisms. Many argue that building affordable housing is a better use of the extra space, particularly considering Ireland is in the midst of a housing crisis.

Gtechna, a company that provides software solutions for parking, code enforcement, and transportation in North America, describes green car parks as “a parking area that blends the elements of sustainability with environmentally conscious structures.” The goal of a green car park is to create an environmentally sustainable place from an unused piece of land.

As of late, cities all around the world are rethinking their approach to parking lots. With the rise of walkable districts and car-free zones, the European government is changing its views on the importance of car parks. For example, Milan has transformed around 250,000 feet of car parks into green spaces.

Closer to home there have been calls to convert the Dáil car park into green space.

The movement to green cities is gaining traction

The idea of “green car parks” isn’t new as countries such as the Netherlands were implementing policies since the 80s, but with the rise of social media and the need for innovative solutions to the climate crisis, people are flocking to this new solution.

While Dubliners are planting trees and flowers to make their city a little greener, the government of Spain is implementing superblocks to keep cars away from certain areas to, for example, improve air or noise pollution in certain areas of the city.

A superblock is 400 x 400 m units, which is a bit larger than a block, but smaller than a whole neighbourhood. The goal of a superblock is to improve biodiversity, encourage sustainable transport, and reclaim space for the community. In 2020, the city of Brussels invested around €140,000 for the development of greener spaces in unused parking spaces.

Green spaces can improve the environment as well as communal living standards of an area . With improvements in public transit, unused car parks might be the perfect target for experimentation.

Sustaining green spaces is a challenge

Although there are many people, governments, and organisations around the world working toward creating green spaces, there is still a challenge to keep the green spaces as they are. Some city councils refuse to accept the conversion of private car parks into green zones.

In an interview with the Guardian, Leen Schelfhout from Brussels explained that “the council came at 5am and took our garden away. A week later, our neighbours organised a party, and they brought so many flowers we were able to start a new garden.”

According to Schelfhout, and various European citizens, creating green spaces can only be done via collective effort and using the law.

Schelfhout continued, “we discovered that if you put your garden on a hand cart it’s allowed to be on the street, which is written in some obscure 150-year-old law. So we got back our old garden, put it on the hand cart and walked it home through the streets of Brussels.”

Many others focus on the communal aspect of green spaces. Vincent Stops, councillor for Hackney Central told the Guardian that people from different walks of life spend time on his parklet.

Strong advocates for green spaces can be found online. YouTubers such as Not Just Bikes and Adam Something have gotten a cult following for their views on public transit and anti-car dependence.

Not Just Bikes’ catchphrase on his videos is: “Cities weren’t built for cars, they were bulldozed for cars.”

Ireland’s new mandate to phase out unused parking lots

The Public Sector Climate Action Strategy in Ireland has ordered the phasing out of parking in buildings that have access to public transport services. This could be a welcome change for the environment.

The strategy also requires individual universities to create and share an annual climate action roadmap on how they are reducing their carbon footprint. This means that universities may be where the mandate starts to take action.

“We’re all in this together,” says Samantha Fahy, the sustainability manager at Dublin City University. “We need to look at the system’s perspective. No one individual can bring a major sustainable change.”

For DCU staff and students, commuting to and from campus are among the top three biggest contributors to carbon emissions. The university has taken an active stance to tackle the issue and has steadily worked on reducing fossil fuel emissions.

According to the Irish Times, higher education has the third largest carbon footprint in the public sector.

While I was interviewing Fahy, she noted, “Change has to come, either by design, or by disaster, the more we can design the better.”

With the Irish state targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030, converting old car parks into green parks can be considered a major step towards environmental sustainability. If you want more green spaces in Ireland, learn how to contact politicians about the climate crisis here.

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