Lucca, west of Florence, is my favorite “small” city in Italy. Even without that bias, it’s interesting to note that Lucca has been working on green urban architecture since the 14th century. Wealthy families used to compete for prestige by building towers with lush rooftop gardens. Egos aside, the gardens also served as the family’s main source of fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, many of these mansions and towers fell into disrepair and were eventually demolished.
In the past 100 years, Lucca has converted the Roman walls encircling the city center into a park. The top of the walls have a tree-lined, two lane road, and the turrets are now mini-parks jutting off the main path.

Jeff has posted before about a similar project: NYC’s plan to convert the High Line into a park.

Photo by Corydora

Google Earth: Lucca

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See Also: Autodesk’s Green Future?,Architects: “Do We Matter?”,Green Office Supplies: Part II,

This entry was posted by Dave Pitman on Monday, August 15th, 2005 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Design, Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.