Paris crowned top Green City and the arrival of Spacemakergallery.com
Happy Urban october!
FUZHOU, CHINA, WILL HOST WORLD CITIES DAY FROM 31 OCTOBER TO 2 NOVEMBER.
Click here: URBANOCTOBER.UNHABITAT.ORG
AROUND THE WORLD with LAA; Whiringa-ā-nuku | October 20
This regular top-up of international news items delivers headlines from around the world derived from active ‘media monitoring’ by Landscape Architecture Aotearoa in collaboration with Wellington’s ReadNowProjects.
Read more below:
Paris crowned top Green City by the AIPH
A new international online gallery and archive of land art and design
Paris crowned top Green City by the AIPH
Paris (currently experiencing widespread protests and extreme disruption) has been named as grand winner of the World Green City Awards presented by the International Association of Horticultural Producers (AIPH) in Italy last month, for its inspiring ‘Retrofitting Paris into a biodiversity friendly city’ initiative.
Eight category winners were announced, from a field of 21 finalists. They were:
Living Green for Biodiversity & Urban Ecosystem Restoration
‘Retrofitting Paris into a biodiversity friendly city’ – Paris, France
‘Surrey’s Green Infrastructure Network – Preserving Biodiversity for Future Generations’ – Surrey, Canada
Living Green for Climate Change
‘Mission Million Trees – Planting 14 million trees in Ahmedabad’ – Ahmedabad, India
Living Green for Health & Wellbeing
‘Cidade da Criança: Nature-Based Early Childhood Infrastructure in Fortaleza’ – Fortaleza, Brazil
Living Green for Water
‘Melaka River Rehabilitation and Beautification Project’ – Malacca, Malaysia
Living Green for Social Cohesion & Inclusive Communities
‘Green City Chiang Rai – Plant Trees, Plant People’ – Chiang Rai, Thailand
Living Green for Urban Agriculture & Food Systems
‘Programa Altépetl’ – Mexico City, Mexico
Living Green for Urban Infrastructure & Liveability
‘Greening the Future – Sheffield’s Model for Climate Resilient Urban Design’ – Sheffield, UK
See also the Winner’s Brochure (PDF).
Recognising the importance of engaging young people in urban greening, the city of Bunia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, was presented with the AIPH Youth Award for its ‘Bunia Climate-Shield: A Green Belt for Urban Resilience’ initiative.
Jury Member Kotchakorn Voraakhom, CEO and Founder of LANDPROCESS and Porous City Network:
“Paris stands out because it shows how a crowded, historic concrete jungle can successfully bring nature back. They aren’t just giving advice; they made greening a legal requirement for developers. They are doing this on a huge scale, targeting 5,000 social housing units a year and ramping up to 40,000 private condos annually by 2030”.
The first AIPH World Green City Awards took place in 2022, with the inaugural awards ceremony held on October 14, 2022 in Jeju, Republic of Korea,
Source: AIPH.org
A new international online gallery and archive of land art and design
Spacemakergallery.com has emerged out of the USA. Many of its listed founders are Fellows of the American Society of Landscape Architects, but the idea originally grew from a conversation between leading landscape architects Peter Walker and David Meyer.
To quote from the site’s About page, “both (Peter and David) had invested months preparing complex exhibitions that were limited to brief museum runs and modest attendance in 2025. Realizing how quickly their work disappeared from public view, they gathered a group of like-minded designers and asked a simple question: "What if there were a better way to present and preserve the results of design practice?" They found that many peers—teachers, practitioners, students, and emerging landscape architects—felt the same need”.
Spacemakergallery.com is in its early days but has been conceived as an online platform for showcasing new and historical projects, supported by visual and written material from creators and historians. At its core, the gallery aims to reveal the many pathways to beauty in landscape art and design, and to make that richness available to a wider public.
Where possible, the exhibitions are presented by their creators or related historians. With open access, the gallery is designed to be particularly interesting to students and recent graduates of landscape design and art. It is supported by practitioners, teachers, and closely related corporate sponsors.
Among the first exhibitions, most with embedded video, is David Walker’s curation of and writing on the making of Barangaroo Reserve in Sydney.
[Thank you to Garth Falconer of Reset Urban Design for referring LAA to this].
Please send any feedback or suggestions for items to laaotearoa@nzila.co.nz Also, if you know anyone who might like to subscribe to our fortnightly LAA e-bulletin please share this link to them: SUBSCRIBE TO LAA