Results from an Urban Green Infrastructure Walk Shop during class

As last year, 3rd year students from the course Smart Solutions for Sustainable Cities were invited to do a walk shop where green infrastructure projects on campus are visited for inspiration, and subsequently design a green infrastructure solution. The main question centered again around performance of the design. 

The first question to answer is 'What is the main benefit you want to design green infrastructure for?' Students could choose from five themes: energy consumption, extreme temperatures, extreme precipitation, flood peaks, and CO2 sequestration. They had to choose one location they are familiar with. While most often locations on campus or in Enschede are selected, this year we also had a group designing for Almelo, and even a city in Mexico. 

Students next chose one type of green infrastructure to reach this benefit, and for the sake of performance, a sensor and measurement frequency to gather data that helps prove their infrastructure actually contributes to the benefit they want to achieve. You can see examples of their work below. Despite the short amount of time, the groups came up with actionable ideas for implementing green infrastructure at the locations.

Carbon sequestration:

 

 Energy consumption:

Flood peaks:

 

 Extreme temperatures:

 

 Extreme precipitation:

 

 

Site visit Hengelo

We have been visiting Hengelo's new market square for the past years and it is wonderful to see the transformation that has taken place. The market square has reused materials where possible in the surrounding streets and now has a park with green walls, flowers, a wadi, and a pond. We also saw examples of streets that have not yet undergone this transformation, but that thanks to the success of the market square, the shopkeepers now also would like to help to make this happen. These type of streets show the complete lack of vegetation that was previously characteristic for much of the inner city.

For future studies, we will have students perform thermal walks to assess the performance of these new measures in terms of reducing urban heat stress in comparison to the areas without measures.