With a touch of green, a city of burning hot summer pavements can shift to a refreshing place for people to relax, bask in the ambience, or catch a breath of fresh air with friends and family.

In 2017, the City of Melbourne embarked on a four-year action plan called ‘Green our City’, which saw the development of green roofs, urban forests and vertical greening within the CBD. Upon the plan’s completion in 2021, Melbourne residents and tourists now enjoy laneways that have had a leafy facelift thanks to urban greening.

Urban greening is the process of adding life into a city’s structure. This includes the addition of potted flowers, plants on footpaths, window planters, green wall systems and more to a city. Following positive feedback from residents and media after the introduction of urban greening, the City of Melbourne has crafted the ‘Green our City Strategic Action Plan’. The vision includes prioritising biodiversity to regain the city’s balance and to dampen the impact of climate change.

In May 2023 the City of Melbourne announced it had made a $51 million investment in the sustainability sector to create greener spaces and support a range of new jobs. Lord Mayor Sally Capp says the aim of this investment is to create a liveable urban environment for the future.

“Melbourne’s urban forest, parks and gardens are some of our most valuable assets, and a key tool in our efforts to combat climate change – so greening our city has never been more important.”

Professor at RMIT University Sarah Bekessy tells upstart that urban greening makes “grey and depressed” cities more liveable by benefitting biodiversity and people.

It aids in “everything from the remarkable health and wellbeing benefits, through to being able to cool the city in heat waves”, she says.

In 2015, a study was conducted by Melbourne University to understand the benefits of having environmentally friendly green roofs near workplaces to help improve employee concentration. The study had participants in separate groups take work breaks on different rooftops. One group in a garden and one without. The results showed that participants who surrounded themselves with greenery performed better in a range of tasks that were set.

Prof Bekessy says that increased productivity in the workplace is one of the many practical benefits that urban greening can provide people in metropolitan areas.

“If your workplace has a green roof and access to nature, then you are likely to have less sick days and happier, healthier staff,” she says.

Greening can even benefit business, Bekessy says.

“Retail streets can be more active if there’s urban greening, which means that businesses are likely to do better in streets with urban greening.”

Landscape architect and founder of the Social Enterprise Edwina Robinson agrees that greenery provides properties that can improve health.

“Most of the studies show that [greenery is] really important to people, not only to provide a sense of wellbeing, but also providing all those ecosystem services like cleaner air, taking up water, filtering pollen, cutting down winds and hot temperatures,” she tells upstart.

Robinson says it is important for councils to be strategic in the way they construct their city forests, however, so that they remain sustainable.

“The City of Melbourne has got a pretty good tree strategy. They talk about not planting more than five to ten percent of the one species in a city forest, because if some sort of disease comes in, the disease won’t wipe out [all of the trees],” she says.

People lucky enough to live in a street full of greenery not only gain the health and wellbeing benefits of being surrounded by nature but also the positive biodiversity effects that come with plantation.

For Bekessy, the advantages of a green city are many.

“The benefits are far and wide from our own personal health through to the kind of productivity and vibrancy of the city.”

Photo: Provided by author.