Abstract:

In 2005 eight cities all over the world, including the City of Łódź, agreed on cooperation within the framework of FP6 project SWITCH - Managing Water for the City of the Future (www.switchurbanwater.eu). In each of them the platform of stakeholders - Learning Alliance - has been asked to define the goal and strategies for efficient environmental management to be reached in next years. The goal was to correspond with the general project SWITCH target - change of paradigm for the water management in the cities, towards: adjustability to global change pressures, considering interventions over the entire urban water cycle/chain, greening of the city for better support of ecosystem services, improvement of health of nature and inhabitants and generating of new mechanisms for cities economic development. The issue identified as a major challenge by the Łódź Learning Alliance was efficient use of rain water as a key for improvement of the quality of life and revitalization of the city. At the level of spatial planning, the city target 2038 has been translated into the concept of the Blue-Green Network - setting a self-sustaining system of connected green areas inside and around the city using the river system as a backbone.

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