https://reasonstobecheerful.world/netherlands-tegelwippen-flowerbeds/
"Unadorned houses and gray sidewalk slabs line the street of the Katendrechtse
Lagendijk neighborhood. Here in the Charlois district in the south of the Dutch
port city of Rotterdam, the dreariness is interrupted only by a few puny trees.
Their survival does not seem assured. In summer, the street heats up quickly,
and in heavy rain it is often flooded.
“It will look very different here tonight,” says Boris Stein. It’s Saturday
morning, and he has just gotten up. He is wearing wine-red jogging trousers.
Holding a coffee mug and a hand-rolled cigarette in one hand, he greets Raymond
Landegent with the other. Landegent has just put on his work trousers. On the
sidewalk are wheelbarrows with shovels and spades, a trailer with plants and
construction sacks full of topsoil.
By the evening, with the help of numerous neighbors, Stein and Landegent will
have completely transformed this stretch of sidewalk. Their task: to unseal
paving slabs and replace them with flower beds across a 100-meter area.
Here in the Netherlands, citizens regularly tear up sealed surfaces and plant
flowers in an effort to combat overheating and flooding. The government not
only accepts this practice, which is known as
tegelwippen — it actually
provides support."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
