Green areas in the city improve health and well-being

2023-07-14 00:10:01

A total of 12 speakers have participated in the course ‘Naturalization of urban spaces: experiences and opportunities to achieve more livable cities’ that has been held at the Menéndez Pelayo International University (UIMP)where they have agreed that green areas in the city improve the health and well-being of residents.

In their interventions at this academic meeting sponsored by the Santander City Council, the specialists have put on the table the important role of green infrastructure in relation to health, biodiversity, urban planning or adaptation to climate change, the Consistory has informed it’s a statement.

Naturalization and enhancement of biodiversity

In this context, Santander’s commitment to naturalization and the improvement of biodiversity has been underlined, a strategy that the City Council has been developing together with SEO/BirdLife that has allowed spaces such as Parque de Las Llamas to become “a refuge for biodiversity and a meeting place and healthy activities for citizens”, according to the SEO/BirdLife delegate and member of Santander Capital NaturalFelipe González.

Parque de Las Llamas becomes “a refuge for biodiversity and a meeting space and healthy activities for citizens”

Together they have seen the different interrelationships that exist between professionals with different backgrounds and the importance of working in multidisciplinary teams, also verified in the more than 50 attendees to the coursecoming from all over Spain, with a very diverse profile both from university, technical field, as well as environmental entities.

Design tree-lined streets, not tree-lined streets

“This broad view allows us to give more accurate answers about how to approach the naturalization process of a city and urban trees“, explained the director of the course, Virginia Carracedo, for whom this academic activity “has changed the way many of the people who have participated see the city.”

A process of renaturation of cities to provide them with resilience and that they can “deal with important challenges such as pollution derived from traffic, the heat island effect and climate change”

Cities like Santander are immersed in a renaturation process to provide them with resilience and that they can “deal with major challenges such as pollution from traffic, the heat island effect and climate change,” according to Mariano Sánchez, from the Royal Botanical Garden. from Madrid. For this, “it is essential to place the tree in the center and not that it be the last thing that is thought of when a street is urbanized or a city is planned”, he remarked, stressing that “it is essential to design tree-lined streets, and not streets with trees”.

Health linked to urban naturalization is very important, since, as Mónica Ubalde de ISGlobal“

The participation of the president of the Spanish Association of Arboriculture, Mariano Sánchez, included the announcement that Santander will host the XX National Congress of Arboriculture in 2025.