Research database

The GRUHPP Project radically reframes the role of Green Infrastructures (GI) and Nature-based Solutions (NBS) in historic urban environments through the theoretical development and elaboration of the Green Restitution theory and approach. Like all urban areas, heritage environments face unprecedented threats from climate change that traditional methods of conservation were never intended to confront. Soaring temperatures, flash floods, landslides, rampant wildfires, droughts, lack of biodiversity, rising sea levels, and many other threats put fragile heritage contexts at risk like never before in their history. Heritage experts and local communities responsible for the protection of these cities are increasingly caught in the dilemma between upholding traditional conservation approaches and developing innovative projects to support sustainability and improve quality of life. While GI and NBS are widely accepted and promoted as solutions elsewhere, within heritage contexts they are often rejected as threats to the authentic preservation and experience of historic cities. The GRUHPP Project repositions GI and NBS in heritage spaces by confronting and resolving this perceived dilemma through a fundamental, interdisciplinary, and multiscalar research. It aims to recognize and reclaim the lost green history of heritage cities, define the heritage-specific risks and opportunities of GI and NBS, and develop the new theoretical concept of Green Restitution to establish clear policy guidelines that will inform future research and planning of urban heritage. It spans the fields of heritage conservation, urban planning, and environmental engineering to challenge long-standing conservation paradigms that have overlooked the critical role that green areas and nature play in the sustainability of heritage. The research will map and document lost green heritage, build a library of GI and NBS heritage projects, and conduct six detailed case studies in UNESCO World Heritage cities in different climate zones across the world. GRUHPP signficantly advances the state of the art to provide new understandings, theory, approaches, and methods to go beyond existing assumptions and lead to more sustainable and liveable futures for historic cities by embracing GI and NBS to respect and reinforce heritage values.