National tour to help increase urban green spaces

A national tour to tackle Australia’s decline in urban green space will begin next week, kicking off in Adelaide on 14 October before heading to other major cities around the country. The Growing the Seeds tour, held by 202020 Vision, will crowdsource solutions to increase urban green space - the first time in Australia such an event has ever been conducted.

The tour will address climate, health and productivity in relation to urban green space, with the aim of uncovering the solutions and pathways to how these issues will be overcome by 2020. It will work with some of Australia’s most well-known experts and leaders in urban green space from all levels of government, business, academia and not-for-profit sectors.

“Encouraging a solutions-orientated discussion between these sectors is a major aim of the tour, along with demonstrating that even though there are a wide range of variations across every state and territory we can work together to develop a national action plan to take us into next decade,” said Robert Prince, the CEO of 202020 Vision partner the Nursery and Garden Industry Australia (NGIA).

The announcement of the tour coincides with the release of a report published in Environmental Pollution which finds that if green spaces in our cities were doubled, heatwave-related deaths in the elderly could be cut up nearly 30%. Funded by Horticulture Australia and the NGIA, the report looked specifically at Melbourne but is relevant to many major cities.

The tour also follows the release of the 202020 Vision report ‘Where Are All The Trees?’, which analysed tree canopy cover in 139 of most urban, dense, local government areas. According to Prince, many of the councils included in the report, “including those with the least amount of tree canopy cover, will be directly engaging in the Growing the Seeds Tour”.

Expert facilitators on the Adelaide leg of the tour will include:

• Dr Jenni Garden, Griffith University
• Stuart Pope, Senior Urban Designer City Design & Transport, Adelaide City Council
• Dr Sheryn Pitman, Green Infrastructure & Sustainable Landscapes Project Officer, Botanic Gardens of South Australia
• Sky Allen, Planning Reform & Projects Directorate, Department of Planning, Transport & Infrastructure
• Simon Divecha, University of Adelaide

Further tour dates and locations will be announced throughout October. To learn more about the tour, visit http://202020vision.com.au/news/2014/08/the-growing-the-seeds-tour/.