“The green roofs in Basel were like industrial wastelands, which have really good wild flowers,” says Dusty Gedge, president of the European Federation of Green Roofs and Walls, who visited the city in 2000 and brought its ideas back to London.
He gave an academic presentation on green roofs 30 years ago that captured the interest of the Basel authorities, and he has since gone on to develop guidelines for how to design the city’s green roofs.
But what makes Basel stand out from many other cities that have pioneered green roofs, industry insiders say, is that it has insisted on using native seeds and plants – and not treated green roofs as a box-ticking exercise.
Basel’s foray into green roofs began in the early 1990s, when residents voted to put part of their bills into a fund to finance energy-saving measures; green roofs were among the solutions.
Although it was not the first city to hit upon the concept – Linz in Austria and Stuttgart in Germany started promoting them in the 80s and boast impressive coverage today – Basel quickly beefed up its scheme by mandating green roofs on all new and renovated buildings with a slope of less than 10 degrees.
