Green roofs, urban greening and resilience: A framework for evaluation

This paper reports on the outcome of a project that aimed to investigate the sustainability outcomes of green roofs through the development of an evaluation framework and the establishment and testing of pilot green roof modules at RMIT city Campus, Melbourne, Australia. The paper raises the question – are greener cities necessarily more resilient and if so for who? An evaluation framework is introduced based on the claimed benefits of green roofs to investigate the sustainability outcomes of green roofs in both Melbourne Australia and in Singapore. What becomes clear is that green roofs serve a range of different purposes depending on design and client intent and few reflect outcomes across the three poles of sustainability. Key findings suggest that green roofs are not necessarily ‘sustainable’ and as a result there needs to be much more rigorous debate about design intent and purpose. What is significant here is the way in which the term ‘green’ dominates discussions around rooftop plantings and as a result assumptions are made about the benefits of all green roofs.