Urban Roofscapes Information

Cities are currently facing challenges like the urban heat island effect, climate change, summer rain-floods, deteriorating air quality and reduction of green space. All of these directly affect people’s health and lead to a diminished quality of life. Still people want to live in cities. And even more people are expected to move into cities. Future cities can only be successful if we manage to build them in such a fashion that they contribute to human health and happiness. Future cities should develop to function more and more like ecosystems, cascading energy through their systems and using resources in circular processes. This way we can, step by step, end waste, end wasting energy and create liveable cities with a high quality of life. In order to create futureproof cities we must unlock and exploit the potential functionality of rooftops in our urban landscapes. Unused rooftops in the urban landscape should be transformed into functional landscapes, or Roofscapes. Roofscapes can be designed to conserve and/or generate energy, manage rainwater, create space for biodiversity and space for people to stay in, or any smart combination thereof. Our mission is to speed up exploitation of the rooftop potential in urban areas by developing new and durable high quality (green-) roofscapes with existing and new products and technology. Roofscapes will be designed with local partners, addressing local issues, using local knowledge and supplemented with our international knowledge base and expertise within our network.