The main target for Växjö Municipality in the Blue Green City project is to draw up an action plan to make sure that blue green infrastructure and ecosystem services will be preserved and developed through the whole planning and building process in the city. Therefore they had to start with finding out more precise how it is working today. They have gathered a group from different departments who have been focusing on a deep status analyze of the planning and building process.
The next step is to analyze the essentiality of different actions and answer the following questions:
1. What are they already doing?
2. Where are they failing?
3. Where is it most important to focus and make a contribution to get the most essential difference for better maintaining and building blue green infrastructure and ecosystem services in Växjö Municipality?
After they will have answers to these questions they will be able to start building a first idea of an action plan for ecosystem services in the planning and building process.
They have also implemented two pilot projects. One of the projects is the place where a new hospital will be built and the other project is a place for new apartments. They will use them through the whole project and focus on different parts to test models of mapping ecosystem services and learn how to work with them in all steps of the planning and building process. While working in this way, they learn from real examples and also share and spread knowledge with many stakeholders. They think this is a good way which will make it easier for them to implement the final result of the action plan as their stakeholders will be a part of the project through those pilot projects.
They have also taken part in workshops together with the local group working on making a new water plan for the Municipality. The Blue Green City project is strongly connected with the new water plan and also with the already existing green structure plan. Taking part in workshops together with them in their process is therefore important for the results of Blue Green City.