As I’ve mentioned many times in class, I am a huge fan of green roofs and a fan of urban vegetation in general in terms of how they can both reduce air pollution and be beautiful while doing it. The article mentions how green roofs replace the plants that the creation of the buildings destroyed. This is what I meant when I ranted about “replacement services” i.e. ways a city can get back the ecosystem services they destroyed. Green roofs are obviously one such way.
Green roofs are good for our health, the air,decreasing the amount of roofing material that ends up in landfills, retaining stormwater, and reducing noise. These are all things we all believe the city needs. However, the paper does include how there needs to be more research into all these topics.
While green roofs are a good idea, they open a new door into whether or not we should go for full on rooftop gardens. This is a whole other can of worms because there would have to be research into which species work best for which climate, etc. But another problem would be that cities would still have pollution and growing food high up where that smog passes through might make that food bad to eat. It’s just something to think about.
