Bosco Verticale
The Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) in the heart of Milan sees cherry, apple and olive trees spilling over balconies alongside beeches and larches, selected and positioned according to their resistance to wind and preference for sunlight or humidity. The award-winning project opened in 2014 and, said Simay, is "an indisputable technical feat with an ecosystem function, a large diversity of trees, plants, insects".
Nordic Harvest
Bathed in purple light, produce like lettuce, herbs and kale sprout in layered racks from floor to ceiling inside a massive warehouse in a Copenhagen industrial zone. Little robots deliver trays of seeds from aisle to aisle at the vertical farm, opened by Danish start-up Nordic Harvest in December. Produce will be harvested 15 times a year despite never seeing soil or daylight -- 20,000 specialised LED lightbulbs keep it illuminated around the clock.
Reforestation in Riyadh
Today any greenery in Riyadh is almost lost in between the multi-lane highways and gigantic interchanges, but within nine years the city plans to have added 7.5 million trees. The reforestation is part of an $11-billion green initiative that also includes creating 3,000 parks in the Saudi capital.
Columbia's green corridors
Colombia's second-biggest city has won plaudits and awards for its "green corridors", an interconnected network that has transformed urban thoroughfares once lacking in nature and strewn with rubbish where drug addicts gathered. Now the 30 tree- and flower-filled corridors connect up with Medellin's existing green spaces such as parks and gardens. The overall effect has reduced the temperature by two degrees Celsius and helped purify the air, according to a city authority video.
Qiyi City Forest Garden
"The air is good when you wake up in the morning, and the green trees are good for us elderly people," said Lin Dengying, who lives in one of the eight towers making up Qiyi City Forest Garden in Chengdu which opened in 2018.
Some parts look like a treehouse perched within a tropical forest, while other places look overrun by their own vegetation, like a jungle is invading and bursting off the terraces. It promised inhabitants of a Chinese megacity life in a vertical forest, with luxuriant plants and greenery on their balcony.