Today, NAIDER attended the Conference ‘Renaturalizing Our Cities’ organized by the Bilbao Urban & Cities Design Association and held at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the UPV/EHU. In it, and after a brief introduction by the representative of the UPV/EHU, Unai Tamayo and the association, Xabier Arruza Bilbao, 5 speakers of different kinds have shared their ideas.
In the first talk, ‘Rights of Nature and Land Management’, given by Estrella Sánchez, Professor of Applied Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business of the UPV/EHU, she stressed the importance of approaching land management from an eco/naturcentric approach and not from an anthropocentric approach. This is an important idea, since the environment has traditionally been defined as that which surrounds us, putting human beings at the center, when solutions should be oriented towards natural parameters, putting nature at the center.
The following speakers shared this vision. Their talks were oriented towards ‘Urban Greening. A necessity with many benefits‘ by Iñigo Urrutikoetxea from IHOBE, and on ‘The Naturalization of Cities‘ by Marta González Cavia, founder of Estudio G&C Arquitectos. The latter made a very applauded statement by NAIDER: We need “more natural” nature. This concept contrasts with the traditional tendency to consider as natural areas green areas composed of lawns, shrubs and decorative seasonal plants, which require more maintenance and provide a lower degree of naturalization. Marta Gonzalez bet self-managed green areas, connected and integrating flows and other natural elements.
Finally, the director of SUDS, Pedro Lasa, with the talk ‘Cities and permeable systems for smart and sustainable rainwater management‘ and the CEO and Founder of Bioo, Pablo M. Vidarte, with his talk ‘The Dawn of the Biotech City‘, have shown their solutions based on nature, related to the increase of permeability for a better management of rainwater and the generation of clean energy integrated in green areas.