WWF Greece Introduces App Aimed At Mapping Urban Green Areas
- by XpatAthens
- Monday, 18 July 2016
Athens has a need for green! With only 0.96 square meters of green area per person, the city hasn’t quite reached the World Health Organization’s (WHO) standard of 9 square meters per person. However, that is all changing with a new app designed by World Wildlife Fund Greece (WWF) in order to improve public urban green spaces and encouraging active involvement from the citizens.
The app GreenSpaces, which is free and available on your mobile device, lets users tag and post photos of parks and green areas and rate them based on cleanliness, tidiness, and overall maintenance. To help facilitate interaction among users, the app is designed so others can report ratings they see as unfair or under-explained. People can report rubbish on the ground, vandalism, and even unscooped pet poop.
Achilleas Plitharas, head of the environmental organization’s Better Life campaign said, “We are aiming to motivate people to get out of their homes, to care more about the green oases that may exist in their city or neighborhood. We also wanted to find a way to motivate the municipal authorities, many of which typically take an interest in green areas only during election campaigns. And we wanted to make all this as user-friendly as possible.”
Nikos Belavilas, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Urban Design at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and Head of the Urban Environment Laboratory, hopes GreeceSpace will make locals take responsibility for keeping the green areas in good condition.
“A key distinction needs to be made. This is not Stockholm with its wet, cool climate and rich soil. This is the Mediterranean. You need to love a Greek park for what it is. A park with pine and cypress trees, bushes and wild weeds,” said Belavilas.
Belavilas also stated, “there is very little that can be achieved without a change in mentality without putting pressure on municipal authorities and without strengthening the citizens’ role in all this.”
Source: Greece Is