Podcast: Turning Cemented Slums Into Green Urban Environments

The equation is frightening and its challenges are often overshadowed by the other major issues keeping us busy, worried and insecure. 

As the freak weather and radical changes in meteorological data hits the news bulletins every day – take the immense heatwave, draught and forest fires in Scandinavia this summer as an example – what stands before us as a task for city planners is how to match urbanisation and climate change in a way that's beneficial for humankind.

'By mid-century, 2 out of every 3 people will call cities home,' declares the global network, The Nature Conservancy, calling for action worldwide. A massive demographic change is taking place (along with a strong wave of economic refugees towards more prosperous parts of the world).

Urban planners have long considered how to balance the built and natural environment, and today, with cities swelling in size, this question is more pressing than ever. 

Efforts to manage this conundrum can be found everywhere. 

'Maintaining, enhancing and creating urban green space not only fulfils the requirements for urban acupuncture, but – to mix medical metaphors – provides a kind of urban vaccination against the emergence of slums, where nothing can grow and depression sets in,' writes Paul Osmond, in an article, explaining the work done to keep human beings in cities healthy.

The Nature Conservancy’s Pascal Mittermaier tells us that the problem is indeed complicated, but there is room for creativity and some solutions are applicable across the globe.