GRA Newsletter February 2018

Melbourne City - Venue of the 2018 Green City Conference (IMAGE: Envirotec Magazine)

GREETINGS FROM THE GRA PRESIDENT

Greetings to all GRA members,

During 2018 we will continue to expand our social media presence and improve the benefits and the experience for our members and website users. To date, our green followers are rapidly increasing due to a renewed consistency with postings on Instagram; FaceBook; Twitter and LinkedIn which has translated into a surge in hits for our website.

The benefits of green roofs and living walls are well documented internationally, however with so much information traffic flowing into our lives now, the main challenge for us remains as Raising Awareness.

Please support us in this task by sending information on projects, links or news that you know of. Local community projects like street verges, rain gardens, council initiatives, urban farming plots, living walls, green roofs or if you're a professional then post your projects in our Project Gallery. Contact us by email on info@graus.com.au

I will be speaking at the AIPH Green City Conference on the 22nd March in Melbourne. The theme is “Towards a Healthy and Sustainable City” and aims to demonstrate how Green Cities are cities where people want to live, how it helps them and how ‘living green’ is used to achieve this. A brief summary of topics are:-

• Why Melbourne is the World’s Most Liveable City: Melbourne City Council will outline how they use living green to enhance the quality of life for citizens and how this contributes to Melbourne being named the world’s most liveable city for seven years in a row.
• Making Cities Greener in Australia: NGIA will introduce Australian initiatives for city greening including progress with their Vision 202020 initiative to increase city greening by 20% by 2020.
• Making high-density cities more healthy through greening: Dr. Melanie Davern Senior Research Fellow, Healthy Liveable Cities Group, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University, Melbourne
• The role of parks in making people healthier: Neil McCarthy, CEO of World Urban Parks will explain how well-designed and implemented parks improve the health of citizens
• Using Green Infrastructure to improve Seoul: President of Korean Landscape Institute
• Blue/Green Integration;  using living green to improve water management: Prof. Tony Wong, CEO of CRC for Water Sensitive Cities is an expert on managing water in cities. He will explain why managing the relationship between water and landscape within a city is so critical.
• The contribution made by Green Roofs to making cities sustainable: Matthew Dillon, President of Green Roofs Australasia
• Creating and maintaining a ‘city in a garden’: Andy Kwek, Senior Director at Gardens by the Bay, Singapore will talk about how Singapore has developed into being a City in a Garden, how it is addressing the challenges of being a green city in the future and why this matters to Singapore.

The conference will be part of the International Flower & Garden Show with tours and events over three days. If you're a plant lover then this will be an extraordinary event so hopefully, I will see some of you there.

Until next month "Think Sustainable ....Think Green",

Regards 

Matt Dillon
GRA President.

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THANKING OUR SPONSORS!

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INTERNATIONAL LEAK DETECTORS / THE GREENWALL COMPANY / SIKA / ENVIROSYSTEMS

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ANDREASENS GREEN / KNAUF INSULATION / THE HILLS BARK BLOWER / DCTECH

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That's all for this edition of the newsletter. Please stay in touch via our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn. We'd love to hear from you!