Concept: The Green Cocoon: A Pergola-like Trellis to Shade Hot Baking Roads with Lush Green Foliage

Roads and carparks can get inhumanely hot in summer. These plug-n-play green shading modules can be installed over any road or car park to reduce the ever-increasing crisis of urban heat.

Katie Patrick
Sep 9, 2018 · 7 min read
The Green Cocoon: Easy-to-install shading pergolas for car parks and roads.

Hello World Labs has come with a great idea to cool cities down in the increasingly hot days of summer. It’s called the Green Cocoon — a green vegetation cover that shades roads and carparks. The Green Cocoon is a a set of modular vertical poles, horizontal spans, planters, and living plants that fit together with the ease of IKEA furniture. The Green Cocoon can be installed over spans of public roads with about the same infrastructure cost as installing a sign pole. Once the vertical and horizontal beams have been installed, pre-grown vines are planted in the planter units and encouraged to grow over the Green Cocoon structure. Within a short time, the foliage will cover the structure, and the road or parking lot will be “cocooned” in lush green foliage. It will prevent the immediate area from heating up to astronomical temperatures on hot days, and will create a beautiful urban feature for locals and visitors to love. See below:

After: Artist’s rendering of a Green Cocoon installed on the main street of Flint, MI.
Before: Main St. in Flint, MI with no Green Cocoon.

Inspiration — green shade structures

Living green shade structures around the world. They’ve been small so far, but they could be more substantial.

Why we need The Green Cocoon— the urban heat crisis is real

In this thermal image you can see many of the very hot surfaces, shown in red, are roads.
The urban heat island: the concrete and asphalt in cities absorb heat making them up to 10C hotter than surrounding areas. Red color indicates highest temperatures, blue the lowest.

This Urban heat causes all sorts of serious problems. High summer temperatures cause thousands of air conditioning units to be turned on at the same time. This demand creates a huge spike in the electricity grid, requiring additional power plants to be fired up to cater to everyone’s AC. This demand is so high that in New York City, it actually doubles the total demand on the grid during the summer.

Electricity demand over 24 hours by season in NYC: Summertime nearly doubles the demand on the grid. Source: 2017 Power Trends Report, New York Independent Systems Operator

Urban heat is also a serious health problem. Every heat wave leaves a wave of mortality in its wake from heat stroke, as well as an average of an additional 30,000 hospital admissions for heat-induced illness.

Urban heat also worsens air pollution by accelerating the chemical reactions that create smog.

Urban heat even increases the rate of violent crime and rape.

Read a full article on the many dimensions of the urban heat crisis here.

But the good news is that vegetation (grass, trees, foliage etc.) is remarkably good at near-nullifying the heat-trapping powers of asphalt. When we can shade these hot, dark surfaces with a tree or vine, their temperature-raising powers mostly dissipate.

Why we need more green space — it’s a health imperative

The most elegant and delightful finding is simply that green spaces makes us happier:

“Having access to even small green spaces can reduce symptoms of depression for people who live near them. The impact was strongest for residents of poorer neighborhoods — they showed at least a 27.5 percent reduction in the prevalence of depression.” — Source: Effect of Greening Vacant Land on Mental Health of Community-Dwelling Adults

Seeing a view of nature, or even a just a photograph of a natural setting leads to people taking less pain medication after surgery:

“Patients exposed to nature images were significantly more likely to switch from strong analgesics to weaker painkillers during their recovery than patients in the other conditions — indicating that the nature images influenced patients’ postoperative pain.” — Source: Pain in its Environmental Context: Implications for Designing Environments to Enhance Pain Control

More green spaces and trees also reduces crime:

“This systematic literature review demonstrated overwhelmingly positive associations between urban green space and decreased violence and crime.” — Source: Green Space, Violence, and Crime: A Systematic Review

Looking at a green roof for 40 seconds lowers increases concentration:

“Participants who briefly viewed the green roof made significantly lower omission errors, and showed more consistent responding to the task compared to participants who viewed the concrete roof.” — Source: 40-second green roof views sustain attention: The role of micro-breaks in attention restoration

Green space is good for children’s brains:

“Children who attended schools with higher outdoor greenspace had a greater increase in working memory and a greater reduction in inattentiveness than children who attended schools with less surrounding greenness.” — Source: Green Spaces Influence the Cognitive Development in Children

“Primary schoolchildren who have been raised in homes surrounded by more greenspace tend to present with larger volumes of white and grey matter in certain areas of the brain.” — Source: Being Raised in Greener Neighborhoods May Have Beneficial Effects on Brain Development

Trees and plants also absorb air pollution:

“It was found that air samples taken from sites with less green space frequently had high concentrations of all fractions of aerosolized particulates than other sites, whilst sites with high proximal green space had lower particulates, even when vehicular traffic was taken into account.” — Source: Does urban forestry have a quantitative effect on ambient air quality in an urban environment?

Green space encourages people to walk and bike, which makes them healthier:

“Recent estimates show that physical inactivity, linked to poor walkability and lack of access to recreational areas, accounts for 3.3% of global deaths.” — Source: World Heath Organization

Our Vision

The future of cities: covered in foliage. Artists’ impressions.

What The Green Cocoon includes

  • Vertical poles
  • Horizontal spans
  • Connectors
  • Planter units
  • Soil for planters
  • Plants
  • Watering and drainage plan
  • Ongoing maintenance plan

Why The Green Cocoon is a good idea

  • Cuts down peak load during summer by cooling the surrounding buildings.
  • Provides a tourist attraction, similar to the New York High Line.
  • Helps to filter air pollution.
  • May decrease crime.
  • Increases property values of nearby and adjacent buildings.
  • Propels economic, community, and cultural development in and around The Green Cocoon.
  • Increases the desirability and livability of the city as a whole.
  • Provides international positive press coverage and social media activity about the location.
  • More cost effective than competing car park shade coverings.

Call to action

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Sign up to katiepatrick.com for free videos, tutorials, and guides about how to apply behavioral psychology, game design, and data to your world-changing project. Connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin — and join our “How to Save the World” Facebook group.

Urban Canopy

We help turn your city into the lush ecotopia it should be using data and nudges to motivate urban greening + cooling actions.

Katie Patrick

Written by

Environmental Engineer | Designer | Author of How to Save the World | Sign up to katiepatrick.com to learn how to use game design & psychology to drive change.

Urban Canopy

We help turn your city into the lush ecotopia it should be using data and nudges to motivate urban greening + cooling actions.

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