Green Roofs are Gaining Ground

The International Green Roof Association (IGRA) recently organised a congress in Istanbul with the objective of promoting good practice and technical expertise whilst benchmarking excellence in green roof design. Attended by over 400 people, the April event attracted experts in landscape, engineering and architecture, all focused on examining where the science of green roof provision is now and could be in the years ahead. Cities like Basel and Stuttgart lead the way on green roofs through a careful combination of mandatory requirements and subsidies.

Regulation & Policy

The most important factor is regulation and policy. It’s all well and good for UK urban ecologist Dusty Gedge to speculate that ‘there’s 24 times the size of Richmond Park in flat roofs in London, which could be green tomorrow’; but how does one achieve that degree of change? The answer is very slowly. Cities like London and Manchester have ‘soft policy’ approaches to green roofs and walls, promoting green space and green infrastructure, but fall short of regulation.

Differing Experiences

The experience is rather different in other cities, as a study by the University of Utrecht revealed. It surveyed five cities to see how green roofs could help to ‘climate-proof’ a place and how public and private institutions could cooperate in their provision. London is as above; Chicago has a mix of mandatory regulation and grants; Rotterdam a subsidy and communication campaign; whilst in Basel and Stuttgart, a well-organised system of mandatory requirements, subsidies and rebates are monitored, evaluated and linked to further subsidies. In all the cities,  public sector involvement was a primary motivator in the early stages of development but tailed off as the market took precedence.

For more on this story, please visit the Architects Journal website by clicking here.

Thank you to Peter Sheard for is insight in this report.

Green Roofing Systems

To find out more about green roofing systems and how we may be able to help install one onto your property, please check out the dedicated section of our website by clicking on the following link – https://www.wallbarn.com/green-roof-new/