In the midst of such a serious recession in Europe, plans are in play for a brand new city outside of Paris, France.
Intended as a model sustainable city, EuropaCity is being sited on 200 acres with a green roof topping the entire city, forming a huge park.
Besides being a park, the green roof will serve crucial functions: it will provide insulation, treat gray water for irrigation and capture rainwater for the city, says Inhabit.
Like most green developments, it will focus on walkable communities with shopping, restaurants and cultural activities, and easy access to mass transit. It’s meant to be a compelling combination of the benefits of urban density with the bucolic feeling of the countryside.
And it will have views of the Paris skyline.
In fact, Danish architectural firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) won a competition to design the city because of its vision for a mixed use, green-roofed development.
A combination of solar, geothermal and biofuels will power the city, along with waste heat.
"EuropaCity will be an experimental hybrid between urbanism and landscape design: center and periphery overlapped in the simultaneous coexistence of a recreational open landscape of rolling hills superimposed on an urban neighborhood of walkable streets, plazas and parks," says BIG.
They envision EuropaCity as "a laboratory for sustainable technologies and a showcase for viable green tech implementations that does not only save energy, but also improves the quality of the urban environment."
The 200 acres EuropaCity is being sited on is prime agricultural land, "the historic agricultural landscape." Perhaps it would be most sustainable to leave it that way.
Here’s the Europa City website:
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