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Living Roofs and Green Covers
The city council promotes actions to activate roofs, decks and courtyards in existing and newly-constructed buildings as well as to maximize social, environmental and energy efficiency, turning them into living and green roofs.
In Barcelona, a Mediterranean and dense city, it is appropriate to consider the rooftops and courtyards as a resource currently unexploited, even though the highest point of the building is usable most of the year. The use and rehabilitation of roofs, roof terraces and courtyards provide numerous benefits. Socially, they give value to the use of roofs by neighbors. From the environmental point of view, they increase the green and biodiversity, facilitating a reduction of energy demand and promoting energy production systems with natural resources to contribute to the adaptation of buildings and cities to climate change, and thus increasing the resilience of the city.
In this regard, the city council promotes various activities to promote environmental and social improvement of green roofs: to provide financial assistance for the rehabilitation and renaturation of the cover, to provide citizens documentation and technical support, to promote the revision of current regulations, to promote measures of direct or indirect financing, to edit teaching materials on roofs and terraces, and to enable an online interactive map with geolocation with existing covers, among other measures.
67% of
buildings in Barcelona have roofs, ie, flat roofs generally accessible
20% covered
They have optimal characteristics for solar use
400,000 MWh/year
of hot water and/or electricity (equivalent to 4 times the consumption of street lighting of Barcelona) can be produce thanks to these covers
To improve the quality of life of people, building a more healthy, more sustainable, self-sufficient and resilient city.
To activate covered roofs and promoting the existing unused space currently used as collective spaces for neighbors.
To promote the use for the installation of green roofs and, if appropriate, combined with energy harvesting facilities and water.