Date of label : 29/10/2024
Urban living and natural beauty, highlighting the importance of green spaces within city environments.
Summary
Since 2015, Veszprém city (HU), through its public utility company (VKSz), has implemented climate-adaptive grassland management. This successful approach, refined through experimentation and testing, rests on three pillars:
- Political and expertise commitment: The city’s leadership supports VKSz in introducing new technology that exploits the advantages of urban green spaces, reducing heat island effects and enhancing biodiversity.
- Scientific collaboration: In cooperation with the Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, seven plots were established to test the methods, to suggest technological modifications, and monitor the process.
- Continuous community engagement: From the start, the local community was kept informed and involved, via information boards, leaflets, lectures, and community festivals.
The solutions offered by the Good Practice
Sustainable, climate-adaptive urban grassland management utilises diverse new technologies to addess the challenges of green surface management in the 21st century. This approach works with nature, recycles resources, enhances biodiversity, and maintains ecological balance, and also helps increase quality-of-life in the city.
A preparatory phase focused on data collection, and creating a vision. The techniques of semi-natural grassland management were then applied to increase biodiversity and reduce the maintenance costs of urban green spaces within 3-5 years.
Key technological changes:
- Reduced mowing frequency, timed to avoid the flowering period.
- Spreading collected grass cuttings to enrich habitats.
- Sowing wildflower seed collected from neighbouring areas.
Community engagement is crucial, with targeted communication and awareness-raising, for example, information boards, leaflets, social media campaigns, wildflower hunt game, guided tours for schools, and community festivals.
Building on the sustainable and integrated urban approach
The project integrates the three dimensions of sustainable development.
- Environmental: Lawns in green areas in the city are managed to increase biodiversity, and reduce water consumption using drought-tolerant plant species and water-retention methods. Smart sensors optimise maintenance, while the installation of renewable energy sources such as solar panels contribute to sustainability.
- Economic: Veszprém promotes economic development by supporting sustainable tourism and local businesses. The city, which attract tourists, supports local producers and artisans to strengthen the local economy.
- Social: Veszprém places great emphasis on community participation and social cohesion, encouraging residents to take part in its greening initiatives like community gardens and events.
Based on participatory approach
The project involves the coordinated activity of diverse stakeholders:
- Municipality of Veszprém: Coordinates and manages project development, provides the necessary resources and support, and plays the main decision-making role.
- Public utility company (VKSz): Manages city green spaces, and drives new technology initiatives.
- Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences: Established pilot areas to monitor vegetation growth, recommends technological changes, and annually monitors the areas to provide reports on biodiversity.
- University of Pannonia: Works closely with VKSz to implement the biodiversity-enhancing maintenance practices on its green campus, with further sustainability interventions planned, for example, dead-wood habitats and composting.
- General public: Veszprém’s citizens actively participate in community events such as tree planting, park renovation, community gardening, and the “For Flowering Hungary” contest with the support of an NGO.
- Local businesses and industry: Support projects that result in economic development and new jobs, and often provide funds or sponsorship for community initiatives.
- NGOs and educational institutions: Participate in educational and research programmes that support the sustainable development of the city.
What difference has it made?
Traditional green space maintenance, with low-to-the-ground mowing every 21 days, does not meet today’s climate and biodiversity challenges. In response, Veszprém introduced a new approach to grassland management in 2015-2016, which resulted in semi-natural grasslands that require less maintenance, and have higher biodiversity. Increased numbers of insects were recorded, especially pollinators, while habitat was created for other species, for instance, by leaving tree leaves in heaps to provide winter shelter for hedgehogs.
The change provided an opportunity to raise awareness, and explain that unmown areas are not neglected but are beneficial for boosting biodiversity and attracting pollinators. After three years, public resistance to the practice has disappeared, with residents even asking the municipality to establish wildflower meadows in their own neighbourhoods.
Key achievements include:
- Reduced mowing frequency, carefully and flexibly timed to the flowering period, saved up to 20% of maintenance costs, money which can be used for other greening projects.
- Collection of grass cuttings and spreading them in other areas enriches habitats throughout the city, including attractive wildflower meadows.
- Creation of a sense of ownership of public green spaces, in the housing estate of Haszkovo where about 30% of Veszprém’s residents live.
Why this Good Practice should be transferred to other cities
Veszprém was a partner in the pilot URBACT III ‘Global Goals for Cities’ project, focused on localising the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One action was the Climate Adaptive Grassland Management initiative, to increase the biodiversity of green spaces and enhance climate resilience.
The practice contributes to:
- SDG 13 (Climate action), SDG 15 (Life on land), and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals).
- The Urban Agenda for the EU priorities ‘Climate adaption’ and ‘Sustainable use of land and nature-based solutions’.
- The URBACT IV BiodiverCity project, with links to the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030.
With no national regulatory system for climate-adaptive lawn management, cities can readily adopt elements of the practice, for instance, using native plant species to create local lawn habitats that enrich urban biodiversity. Transferring this sustainable urban green space management practice to cities in water-scarce areas would be especially useful, because it uses seeds of drought-resistant plant species as an adaptation to climate change.
The new management practice started in the Haszkovo housing estate in Veszprém, and has been extended to other parts of the city such as the Cholnoky estate.
Requirements for transfering the climate-adaptive lawn management practice:
- Dedication and commitment on the part of the city management and operations.
- Municipal support, including local regulations and financing.
- Selection of plant species suitable for the climatic and soil conditions.
- Training and educational programmes for practitioners.
- Public information, awareness-raising and education programmes from the start.
- Monitoring, evaluation, and flexibility to optimise results.
Veszprém's climate-adaptive lawn management practice also works in Budapest, where it successfully reduced intensive mowing and increased the resilience of lawns. Drought-tolerant grasses are also planted in public parks in Budapest. Both cities adapt the practice to local climatic conditions, contributing to sustainable urban green space management and increasing resilience to climate change.