The "La Città per il Verde" Award has reached its 24th edition, organized by the publishing house Il Verde Editoriale to enhance the Italian municipalities that have distinguished themselves for innovative green management projects or methods aimed at improving and increasing green areas .
New construction and redevelopment interventions in which the maintenance aspect is privileged will be awarded.
“The Award – explain the organizers – also welcomes interventions and initiatives of other public bodies and private structures for public purposes that have been able to enhance the green spaces of their structures. As an example we cite hospital spaces with therapeutic greenery, timely interventions for the enhancement of historic gardens and botanical gardens, natural spaces within university campuses, gardens and vegetable gardens within schools. Furthermore, voluntary associations that carry out a public service for the redevelopment and maintenance of green spaces in our cities can also submit their applications directly".
The Prize is structured in such a way as to assign the following awards: "Urban green", "Maintenance of green areas", "Best voluntary initiative for the management of urban green spaces".
Also this year a special prize will be awarded to a female figure who has distinguished herself in the green sector, the result of the synergy born between the "La Città per il Verde" prize and weTree (a project conceived by Ilaria Borletti Buitoni, Ilaria Capua and Maria Lodovica Gullino), with the aim of expanding the audience of interlocutors for a more extensive and transversal awareness-raising work on the importance of green areas in cities.
Since last year, the Award has been enriched by the survey on the maintenance costs of public green areas "INVESTING IN GREEN TO GROW" to find out the costs incurred by the Municipalities to maintain and increase their green assets.
"This information - continues from Il Verde Editoriale, which has been publishing the ACER magazine for 39 years - is more necessary than ever in a historical period in which the European strategies of reforestation and increase in the number of trees, in addition to the resilience objectives of the green cities envisaged by the Pnrr, require that the public green sector respond to challenging aspects such as: the increase in average temperatures, the variability of rainfall and the age of urban green systems.
The central theme is to raise awareness of the Municipalities so that they plan a reasonable increase in spending between now and 2030/2050 for the maintenance and growth of the resilience of public parks. The objective of the public administrations should be to spend better and gradually increase the budget for the management of public parks.
Municipalities participate in the Award divided into the following categories: 1st category - Municipalities with up to 5 thousand inhabitants; 2nd category - Municipalities from 5 thousand to 15 thousand inhabitants; 3rd category - Municipalities from 15,000 to 50,000 inhabitants; 4th category - Municipalities with over 50,000 inhabitants. The 5th category includes other public bodies, private structures for public purposes and voluntary associations that perform a public service.
All the information, the announcement and the forms to fill in to present your candidacy, together with further information, are available on the website www.ilpremiolacittaperilverde.com