Repaving Our Concrete Jungles With Grassy Green Streets

Las Vegas is one of those places that embodies eternally pulsing neon lights, neverending development projects and consumerism to the nth degree. You wouldn't anticipate that amid its tightly packed hotels, blinging-kachinging casinos and endlesss food emporiums, a road of emerald could conceivably pave the way. Looks rather inviting, though, doesn't it?

Ditto for the bustling streets of France, which typically harbor countless pedestrians who navigate their daily course to work, school, cafes, stores and other metropolitan staples. Unlike the countryside, which is easy on the eyes and reputed for its idyllic rolling hills and natural landscaping, the star of France's cityscape is its diverse architecture, neverending traffic and cultural icons...however, last time I checked, it looked nothing like this. 

If you're the slightest bit curious about what's going on and why our planet's major cities have undergone this top-secret eco-makeover, then join the club. Aside from being a pleasant distraction from our traditional concrete jungles, much easier to walk on thanks to the built-in shock absorbing powers of grass and -- let's face it -- a far better material to help combat global warming than black asphalt, are grass-paved streets really the wave of the future?

The artistic collaborative Green Island team -- consisting of Imamura Yuichiro, Imakawa and Taguchi Ryo -- are keeping their fingers crossed that urban developers sit up and take notice of their digital landscape transformations...and maybe even go as far as to make them a reality.

Athough their project (which currently consists of 26 digitally altered images of classic urban locales around the world) is presently just a concept, they hope that it will catch on, or at the very least that their vision will inspire a greening trend in our world's big cities.

It begs the question: is the grass really greener on the other side of the eco-friendly highway? Well, probably. Traditional black road tops are notorious for generating a thermal heat island effect that, coupled with the reflectivity or albedo of the dark street surface, are both responsible for that old familiar concrete jungle-style sizzle (particularly on summer days). 

In addition to making humans miserable, this ongoing scenario makes Mother Nature positively cranky...and yet, if we were in just the United States alone to replace the 8.5 million miles of highway that we have (100,000 square miles of which are specifically paved with black asphalt) with a lighter colored surface (such as grass), we could effectively reduce atmospheric heating and double solar reflectivity...which is a very good thing, indeed.  

Hmmm, maybe the Green Island guys are brilliant after all. Naturally, this conversion wouldn't come cheap, but don't you think the investment would be worth it in the long run? Even if green grass highways and parking lots ended up reflecting just 5% more solar heat than they currently do, wouldn't the slight reductionn in equilibrium temperature be justifiable and a positive step in the right direction?