Urban jungles: Transforming skylines of NYC & Milan
- Deven Kancherla
- Apr 20
- 2 min read
Bosco Verticale
The Bosco Verticale, also known as the Vertical Forest, is located in Milan Italy. It consists of two skyscrapers and together, these urban jungles hold 800 trees and 15,000 smaller plants. To put that in perspective, it would take 30,000 square meters to fit that many plants on a flat piece of land and the designers of the Vertical Forest made it happen with 3,000 square meters; that’s ten times the amount of plants for an area that is 10 times smaller. These buildings hold all of the benefits of plants like reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, increasing the air quality, and more. It has also won several awards like the International Highrise Award and the Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat Award.
The High Line
The High Line is an elevated park located in Manhattan in New York City. This park may look similar to the Vertical Forest and many other designs incorporating plants into cities, but it is different than the rest as it was an old rail line that was repurposed into what it is today. Rising 30 feet above street level and stretching just under 1.5 miles long, it holds 500 species of plants featuring a total of over 150,000 plants. It's main benefits are absorbing rainwater, urban cooling, and reducing runoff. It also serves biodiversity boost supporting pollinators.
Deven's Reflections:
These are just two projects that show how cities can transform unused spaces or completely start from scratch to create a 'living building'. They go to say that there are multiple ways to tackle problems. Milan had an issue relating to air pollution, but didn't have a lot of space to work with. New York City had an abandoned rail line that needed to be transformed into something useful. Milan built vertically instead of horizontally with the Bosco Verticale and NYC created a public park out of thin air. If cities continue to work around their limitations while embracing these type of initiatives, we put ourselves in a better place to reach our environmental benchmarks.
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