A new series of free webinars from AIPH features the world’s leading cities

AIPH is proud to launch the second series of Green City Briefings, featuring world-leading cities demonstrating the power of plants. Last year, the City of London Green City Briefings saw 100s of attendees from 50 different countries join AIPH’s vision for greener, more cohesive, and more resilient cities. Each of these new series of Green City Briefings provides expert opinion, features successful city implementation, and generates an in-depth discussion.

This year’s international briefings feature winning cities from the AIPH World Green City Awards 2022. Each themed webinar, featuring world-renowned experts alongside global examples of best practices, aims to link up knowledge and practice. The presentations are suitable for an audience of policymakers, urban planners, practitioners, and the interested general public.

Sharing practitioners’ and researchers’ experiences of the many ways to enhance cityscapes through power plants is vital to bringing global change. AIPH Green City is proud to be at the centre of creating this conversation.

The Secretary General of AIPH, Mr Tim Briercliffe, says, “AIPH is again pleased to be collaborating with the Worshipful Company of Gardeners to present the Green City Briefings 2022/23, and is also delighted to announce sponsorship of this series by Expo 2023 Doha Qatar so everyone can register for free. The cities featured over the next 18 months demonstrate significant progress in including plants and nature in the city’s form and function, with talks from around the world.”

The October session focused on design and plant selection for challenging climates, featuring Doha in Qatar and the upcoming Expo 2023 Doha Qatar landscape. The theme of Expo 2023 Doha Qatar is ‘Green Desert, Better Environment’. The Expo aims to draw attention to the threats of desertification and the potential solutions that can be employed. The October Briefings session was led by Mark Laurence, a horticulturist, consulting arborist and landscape designer interested in adapting landscapes to climate change, restoring ecosystem function and finding psychological and material comfort from the design of good space.

The speakers discussed techniques that enable the selection and sustainable cultivation of trees and plants in challenging climates that play an essential role in promoting greening worldwide. Harry Watkins, Executive Director for St Andrews Botanic Garden in Fife, Scotland, presented the garden as a living research and conservation experiment where staff explore how ecology and evolution unfold in the plant kingdom.

Francesco Roesler demonstrated his enthusiasm as a designer, having worked for international and multidisciplinary companies over the last 10 years. At Dar London, he has learnt how to design in challenging environments, leveraging natural assets even when they seem invisible.

The speakers discussed techniques that enable the sustainable cultivation of trees and crops in arid lands to play an essential role in reversing desertification problems worldwide.

Watch an on-demand recording of this session from AIPH’s Green City Briefing website page. You can also view September’s Buenos Aires session, which focused on how habitat conservation strategies are integrated into urban development, particularly human and habitat
vulnerabilities.