Porto is growing greener by the day
Article
An innovative plan to plant trees in public spaces was presented today at Porto Municipal Tree Nursery. There are 14 new areas, the so-called Biospots, distributed along the main roads, in a total of 17 hectares.
It is a fact that more than 50 percent of the world's population now lives in cities.
Most often than not, the rapid expansion of cities takes place without any land use planning strategy, the resulting environmental impacts of urbanization are often intensified by climate change and include increased pollution and frequency of extreme climatic events.
Porto City hall is undertaking a Public tree planting in the city.
Porto Biospots Network is part of the Native Urban Forests of Porto (FUN PORTO) program, in the framework of the "100 million trees planted in Porto Metropolitan Area" project.
The network is intended to mitigate some of the negative impacts and social consequences of urbanization, and also make cities socio-economically and environmentally more sustainable, as part of the City Hall's sustainable environment strategy.
The first phase of this tree planting process will enable planting around 800 new trees from Porto Municipal nursery.
By 2021, around 10,000 trees are expected to be planted in the city public spaces, thus contributing to offsetting climate change, by removing air pollutants that can trigger respiratory illnesses, reducing storm water run-off, keeping the city cooler during the summer and providing shelter and food for birds and other wildlife.
The City Hall also encourages people to start vegetable gardens in public spaces and the "if you have a garden, we have a tree for you" project is an environmental project sponsored by Porto city Hall to promote environment and climate protection and to provide citizens, businesses and city organizations with trees and bushes for planting in gardens and parks all across the city of Porto.
This ecologically oriented initiative is in line with the municipal strategies for the Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change Programme, and is developed in the context of the FUTURO - project of 100,000 trees planted in the Metropolitan Area of Porto.