Do you prefer to sleep in the forest or in the city? In Milan, you can do both. The Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) comprises two gigantic residential towers with outdoor terraces full of trees and plants. Since 2014, Italian architect Boeri has been calling this the start of the city of the future. Meanwhile, luxurious urban vertical forests and walls have popped up all over the world. In the Netherlands, Eindhoven is one of the first cities to build such a tower. The green tower at Strijp-S – the old Philips Natlab site – has been under development since 2019 in collaboration with the Trudo found ation. What is special about this one, is that this vertical forest is committed to social housing.
We have been talking about Smart Cities for years. This is a broad concept, for researchers, developers, designers and urban planners. The question remains: who is going to pay for it? The cost of promoting a smart city seems to lie primarily with the (municipal) government. But since green infrastructure means a lot to our biodiversity, we don’t want to exhaust the earth, and we want our children to have a nice place to live, we keep looking for smart solutions in the built-up environment. A ‘smart city’ calls for multiple perspectives. With smart logistics, emission-free transport solutions, ICT, new technologies and green spaces in the city, we can build better cities together. Creative thinking is at the heart of the collaboration.