In 2013, Hamburg, Germany's second most populous city, announced the launch of a full-scale Green Roof campaign. Homeowners have been asked to green their roofs (in exchange for tax breaks), while the authorities themselves will set an example for the townspeople: they will begin to lay out gardens on the roofs of municipal buildings and even remove the autobahns into tunnels so that new green zones will spread above them, where people will live and relax. …
It is planned that in 15-20 years the whole of Hamburg can be easily cycled or walked without crossing major highways and railways. And 40% of the city's territory will be covered with green spaces: parks, gardens, playgrounds, bike paths - and all this should be connected with each other. The Department of Urban Planning and the Environment even took care of the animals, saying they can move freely around the city without the risk of being hit by a car.
The first sign in organizing an accessible environment will be the reconstruction of the A7 autobahn, which literally cuts through western Hamburg with a wide stream of rushing cars, haunting the townspeople: they have long complained about the noise and the inability to cross to the other side of the road. Not surprisingly, this is the country's longest autobahn, running from south to north - from the border with Austria to the border with Denmark.
During the reconstruction of the three sections of Hamburg, the A7 will be hidden in tunnels, and on top, on the ground, there will be recreational areas with a total area of 25 hectares. Whole neighborhoods, artificially cut off from each other, will again work as a single space. The implementation of the project will significantly improve the standard of living in the Schnelsen, Stellingen and Altona districts: in the first two, construction work began directly in 2015, in Altona they will begin in a few years. It is planned to complete the construction of all tunnels with a roof length of about 3,500 meters no earlier than 2022.
For the green roof over the 560-meter tunnel in Schnelsen, the jury chose a project by the Berlin-based landscape architecture firm POLA, which was based on the concept of “breakfast on the grass”. Garden plots will be located along one edge of the roof, along the other - a promenade, and a meadow will stretch between them, where residents of nearby areas will have picnics in good weather.
The walk on the green roof will only be interrupted for pedestrians in one place, where it will be crossed by Fromerstrasse, which has every chance of becoming a new center of attraction for residents of both areas previously separated by the A7 highway. Instead of a noisy highway, cafes, restaurants, venues for festivals and fairs will appear here. All this will be in three years, when all construction work in the tunnel and on its roof will be completed.
A little longer will take the construction of an 893-meter tunnel in Stellingen with a ground green zone, which, for the convenience of residents, will also be crossed by only one street. For this object, the concept of the Berlin bureau Weidinger was chosen, which involves the creation of three zones, going one after another.
Above the southern entrance to the tunnel will be the gardens and vegetable gardens of local residents. I must say, this is a great idea: gardeners will receive plots on the roof, and their current allotments on solid land will be given to the city for capital construction, which will contribute to solving the housing problem in Hamburg. Despite the possible inconveniences (the exchange will be compulsory), there are obvious advantages: it will always be sunny and quiet on new sites. The next, central part of the roof in Stellingen is intended for recreation of the townspeople, there will be green lawns and a playground. And to the north, a real park will begin, passing from the roof of the tunnel into a small forest on the ground.
But all this in its scope cannot be compared with the main construction site - a 2-kilometer green corridor in Altona. The authors of the project are the Hamburg-based architecture firm Arbos Freiraumplanung.
The roof in Altona will act as a bridge between the other two recreational areas, and it will be possible to walk along it from the city park to the banks of the Elbe. The idea of creating a green corridor on this site dates back to the 1920s, when urban planner and architect Gustav Olsner was creating master plans for the districts of Hamburg. By digging in the road infrastructure and moving part of the garden plots to the roof of the tunnel, the authorities expect to free up space for the construction of 2,000 houses. Due to the large amount of work, the Altona section will be completed last and will complete the entire project.
The costs for the reconstruction of the A7 will be divided between the federal and city budgets in a ratio of 83/17. More than half of the amount will be spent on the construction of tunnels, about a third - on the reconstruction of the surface sections of the autobahn, and another 12% - on the installation of noise barriers.
Despite the high costs, Hamburg is steadily moving towards the dream of becoming a green city, which was announced at the IGRA congress two years ago. The goal is for any type of landscaping to be carried out on each new or existing flat roof with an area of 100 m2… 70% of all buildings in the city fall under this criterion.
Thanks to Hannah Bornholdt from Hamburg City Hall (Department of Environment and Energy) for her help in preparing this article
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