Victor: We have spent a lot of time on the forms and characteristics of urban greenery, now let's turn to technical and administrative issues. Are urban greenery maintenance standards useful and why should they be enacted?
Joanna: Of course, they are sometimes useful, and even necessary under certain conditions, because as with everything - sometimes as in the proverb: hell is paved with good intentions.
In fact, I myself have fallen victim to good intentions several times, when, working in an office, I tried to develop forms that were intended to facilitate work and control over certain substantive parameters. Unfortunately, as a consequence of improper use, they actually became a tool of a kind of repression and oversimplified control of solutions making it difficult to apply original solutions.
Therefore, an evident plus of the creation of standards is actually talking about greenery and its boundary functionalities. I also perceive as positive the phenomenon of many cities and municipalities creating their own standards. It then becomes possible to introduce rules based on regional and local conditions. Because, after all, regional variation in the case of rules of care, forms and species of plants is huge on the scale of our country. Therefore, one should be wary of too much unification of standard solutions especially when drawing knowledge from nationwide studies.
The second danger I am concerned about is the issue of misuse of standards by their primary creators, i.e. offices. Officials can use such documents later as a kind of shield for decisions of all kinds. Sometimes it can even be an excuse for not making decisions at all.
Roadside greenery also has a filtering function
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Therefore, in my opinion, standards are good, as long as they are general guidelines knocking back individual design solutions, however. It is up to the designers to design and officials to control whether the project does not violate generally defined rules. For example, specifying a closed list of plants in a standard is, in my opinion, a complete misunderstanding. Similarly, specific aesthetic forms. Principles and guidelines and goals should be defined rather than giving specific tables or catalogs of solutions, and then evaluating whether a specific design solution realizes them. That's all there is to it. In an era of rapid advances in technology and environmental changes due to climate change, giving ready-made solutions is short-lived and questionable. Just as an architect takes responsibility for the form of his building and technical solutions, and the authority only verifies its compliance with the law, leaving the designer with professional responsibility, it should be with landscape architecture projects.
In general, I am a big opponent of standardization of specific solutions. Such a negative example for me is, for example, the German standards for rainwater management. Retention issues are described there very precisely so that water can actually be retained in only a few forms of water management described in the standard. For example, when the description states that we are designing an absorption basin, it must be exactly 30 centimeters deep - otherwise it is a design error. These are cursory requirements that favor off-the-shelf catalog form solutions over engineering design tailored to a specific problem. It's also clearly a favoritism to specific manufacturers of off-the-shelf solutions. What we are cutting off here is customized design, tailored to a specific situation. The designer is there to use his creativity beyond putting together "tetris" puzzles, because that's what he gets paid for.
Wiktor: So if cities should use standards, it should be as a philosophy, a guideline, rather than standardization?
Joanna: Yes. Standards should set directions, not define and eliminate design processes, cutting off designers' creative and needed visions. Let's not bail out landscape architects with standards and norms.
Urban greenery should be a full-fledged part of where we live
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Victor: Another element: the issue of auditing urban greenery - a good direction?
Joanna: A necessary direction. We cannot manage something without knowing the essence of what we are actually managing. Understanding the status quo is a necessary start to any new activities. It amazes me to embark on the development of municipal standards, tree charters, et cetera without full awareness of what we are specifically working with in a given municipality/city. What the originality of this resource is, what the biggest problems actually are. It's like developing guidelines for cleaning an apartment floor and washing upholstery without thinking about what material they are and what surface they represent....
The audit is also a question of the value of greenery, which we have already discussed. There is already a widespread awareness of downplaying the value of greenery, but this is not just a matter of ill-will on the part of city authorities, but the lack of tools that actually make it possible to determine this value as an asset of a city or municipality. In my opinion, what is needed here is an amendment to the Accounting Law, incorporating greenery into city/enterprise assets. Only then can expenditures on greenery be treated as a true investment in property or an expense. Only when greenery (not just trees!) exists as an asset of our cities, it will be possible to talk about the real increase in its value or abuse and possible mismanagement. And these are already concretes difficult to ignore. This is really a necessary step we should take towards treating greenery as a value and building actual green infrastructure comparable to the gray one. Without this, we operate all the time in terms of understatements, interpretations and good or bad will.
Wiktor: This brings us to another topic, the issue of greenery compensation. Often this compensation in Polish cities seems unfair, and some of it is not implemented at all. How to shape it?
Joanna: Here we return again to the issue of valuing greenery and the need to treat it also as a book value. If we achieve this goal, compensation would be greatly simplified from the perspective of economic calculation. The financially defined stock of greenery cut (valued based on the value of the ecosystem services it provides) would have to be restored, yielding at least similar service values. Without this, for example, cuttings of biodiverse tracts of successional greenery, which is a sanctuary of biodiversity and a habitat for a multitude of living organisms, are compensated by tiny trees planted in isolated avenue forms.
It is important to use various forms of greenery that can be adapted to the function of the
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Victor: This is an issue at the central level, but what about at the local government level?
Joanna: Municipalities, in principle, by law, are free to regulate the compensation policy in exchange for cuttings on their territory. However, I think they don't use it enough. The only tool that is commonly used is the so-called. replacement plantings in the form of avenue plantings - trees with girths of 16-18 cm, rarely larger, planted at wide intervals (every 5-6 meters), staked, et cetera Usually, too, a conversion rate of 2-3such trees for each tree felled, regardless actually of the circumference of the felled tree as long as the tree qualifies for the calculation of a felling fee in accordance with the Law. This form of compensation applies regardless of whether we cut greenery from a five-hectare wooded plot or cut 5 old 100-year-old linden trees from the city center. This can be better arranged even without changing the regulations. Recently, at the request of the Gdansk Environment Department, I have been participating as an expert in an attempt to work out more adequate forms of compensatory plantings.
Here we are proposing three forms of compensation, which are to depend on how much and from where we cut down, and to link directly the parameters of the trees planted with the parameters of the perimeter of the trees cut down so that there is a correlation of the sum of the perimeters of one and the other. Without this, there is no chance to even come close to true - equivalent compensation.
In the case of forms, in addition to the commonly used avenue, we want to introduce two additional solutions, resulting from the ecological form of the greenery being cut down. The first is compensatory planting in the form of solitary trees, repeatedly nursed (8, even 10 times) and of significant girth (50, 75, and even 100 cm, depending on the parameters of the trees to be cut down) for situations where large, ecologically culturally and socially valuable trees from the center of the city or district are cut down. Such a costly solution will only apply to a few percent of cuttings. However, there are often situations when there is no other option than cutting down. Such a solution will make possible negotiations easier for us residents, as well as investors and officials.
The second new form of compensation that we are working on concerns especially large area cuttings carried out for development or industrial projects. Most often, greenery is then removed from huge tracts of land comprehensively. Often this is sub-growth in various stages of succession towards woodland, very important for biodiversity and numerous ecosystem services. Therefore, this cannot be replaced by tiny individual plantings of trees alone . In such cases, compensation in the form of biocenotic planting, for example, in the form of microforest, is necessary. Importantly, it does not necessarily have to be implemented in the same place where the felling occurred. If a city or municipality consciously manages its greenery system, it can identify such areas for compensation at the scale of the district.
In summary - what is important in compensation, as in the case of standardization, is the flexibility of solutions and allowing different forms of ecological planting linked to the form of what is removed and from where. Importantly, this can also be associated with benefits for the investor - biocenotic greenery, thanks to its ecosystem form, can perform additional services, for example, as retention greenery.
Wiktor: To sum up, any city can create such a system for itself, plus it should be as diverse as possible.
Joanna: Absolutely. In addition, thanks to a more flexible policy, we can also take care of solving other problems related to replacement plantings like their massive dieback a year or two after planting. After all, we can oblige the investor, by contract, to such and not another form of compensatory planting at the same time impose on him the obligation to appoint a supervisory inspector to control the condition of the plant material and the quality of the planting work, as well as to implement systematic inspections of the condition of the plants during the grace period and to keep a log associated with such activities. Such a system could also provide for specific fines for non-compliance or carelessness in carrying out the duties.
The Law on Nature Protection needs a lot of reform, but in my opinion, however, the excuse that it can't be done is too often made. In fact, even in its current form, it provides a lot of opportunities - only the desire is needed.
Urban greenery should also be looked at through the prism of adaptation to climate change
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Victor: We talked about the issues of standards, audits and compensation. You are a designer and have direct contact with officials. How should cities create official institutions to support the development of greenery?
Joanna: This is the most difficult question you asked me today. I myself was an official for two years, working in a municipal company, so I know the specifics of such work from the inside. Very often the competencies for various types of municipal green spaces are broken up into many municipal units. This leads to difficulties in the comprehensive management of the urban green system, intra-city competition between different offices and a de facto blockage of the creation of green infrastructure on a city scale other than a planning entity. Without a person empowered with authority and power at the level of the city vice mayor, in my opinion, it is impossible to develop and actually comprehensively manage this urban resource. What is needed here is the ability to actually coordinate the activities of many city structures, impose tasks on them and control the correctness of their implementation.
Wiktor: So a separate institution?
Joanna: Analyzing the various ideas for green policy of many cities, I personally put a lot of hope in the path taken by Szczecin. The office of the city gardener was established there, embedding it in the Department of Environment, while allowing it to act on behalf of the mayor. Such empowerment in the administrative structure gives the power to substantively determine the strategy of action, as well as to coordinate the work in the field of greenery of all other subordinate units in this area. This gives a kind of matrix organizational structure, where it is the Gardener who determines the strategic merit and operational directions so that this is then implemented in the various units responsible for specific areas, such as road management, greenery management, flood risk management, municipal properties, sports facilities, et cetera.
In my opinion, an urban gardener embedded in a municipal company does not have the power to impose anything on other departments, and this eliminates such ideas as effective. I think it is even more effective to combine such a gardener's office with the office of the city architect. In this way it is even easier to translate the idea we discussed today of the city's ecosystem - the biotope with its architecture and gray infrastructure and biocenosis.
Beaufort estates in Gdansk
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Victor: Let's play a game of imagination. What would you advise councilors or mayors if they asked you about the ideal green policy in the city?
Joanna: To start necessarily with the establishment of the institution of an Urban Gardener - an institution that would show that greenery in the city is important and valuable. Then all subsequent steps will be easier, it's a matter of implementing the strategy from the general to the detail. The key task for such an institution, on the other hand, should become the development of a strategy tailored to the needs of a specific city and the adequate orchestration of the process of its implementation. Together with an urban architect, they would create an office reflecting an actual ecosystem approach to the city with its biotope and biocenosis.
Victor: Thank you for the interview.
Interviewed by Wiktor Bochenek
As part of our #CityMojeawNim series, we are asking interviewees for book recommendations for social scientists, officials and local government officials. Below is Joanna Rayss' recommendation:
Books:
1. Jan Mencwel, Hydrozagadka, K rytyka Polityczna Publishing House.
2. Michal Ksiazek, Atlas of Holes and Slits, Znak Literanova Publishing House.
3. Szymon Bujalski, Prescription for a Better Climate. Healthier cities for a sicker world, High Castle Publishing House.
4. Marcin Popkiewicz, World at the Crossroads, Sonia Draga Publishing House.
5. Jennifer Gallé, Secrets of the Earth. Climate, cities, biodiversity - everything you need to know about our planet today, Wydawnictwo Literackie.
Films:
1. The Martian, directed by Ridley Scott.
2. Kiss the ground, by Joshua Tickell, Rebecca Harrell Tickell.
Joanna Rayss - an expert in the implementation of elements of Green City Infrastructure and Urban Surface Retention Systems as tools in climate change adaptation. Co-author of the book "Urban Surface Retention System in Adaptation of Cities to Climate Change - from vision to implementation". Author of numerous press articles popularizing this issue. Working as a small retention specialist at the Gdańskie Wody municipal company in Gdańsk, she had the opportunity to influence the change of urban rainwater management policy towards greater use of the principles of ecohydrology, urban ecology and ecosystem services. As of 2019, she is a partner at Rayss Group, and as of the second half of 2021, she is also vice president of the company's board of directors. She specializes in the design of public areas, estate greenery and Nature Based Solutions and Ecosystem Based Solutions.
