Green Skylines
The benefits of green roofs are well documented, but generally focus on macro-environmental benefits and positive externalities to an urban community at large or relatively intangible potential benefits for building owners, such as reduced energy bills and improved sound reduction.
To make green roofs a viable reality for urban environments, you require the following:
- A reason to go to the roof:
Beyond a roof garden being "a nice bit of green in the city", for it to come good on the full range of potential benefits it needs people and traffic. The positive externalities to the community, in terms of air-quality improvements, reduced ambient temperatures or increased urban bio-diversity, accrue whether people use a roof garden or not. Therapeutic, community and recreational benefits require people to actually go to rooftop gardens and enjoy or use them. - Greater economic motivation to install and maintain green roofs:
Benefits to the broader community are not in themselves sufficient motivators (without legislation) to most people in the business of profiting from property ownership. They want to see more than potential reductions in energy costs. Building owners want revenue streams to offset the maintenance and installation costs.
Inkstone's Green Skylines Project addresses both of these issues by installing highly profitable destination businesses on rooftops. Inkstone has designed several concepts that fit the bill. These businesses give people a reason to congregate on and enjoy green roofs, while increasing returns on a property, making green skylines viable in the urban economy.