The Escofet 1886 Green City brochure 

The future is green: turn hard grey public spaces into a living oasis

Our towns and cities are at a tipping point. Rising heat stress makes squares uncomfortable in summer, intense cloudbursts flood streets and biodiversity loss weakens the urban ecosystem. The traditional grey approach no longer holds. It is time for a new vision of climate-adaptive public space where green is not decoration but functional infrastructure that cools, steers water and raises social quality.

Picture a town centre where people find shade beneath a canopy, where rainwater is captured locally through smart green structures and where life hums. This is not a distant dream. This is Green City: a practical approach using planters and green islands that enables step-by-step greening and depaving, even in places with complex underground services and limited space.

Where do you start? How do you integrate green on cable-rich sites? How do you choose concrete planters and green-island configurations that are durable, easy to maintain and aesthetically in tune with your context? The Green City brochure gives you the framework to make the right decisions, from geometry and height to sensory experience, water management and material choices.

At Servibo we know the reality of Benelux projects. As your knowledge partner we curate and deliver not loose products but strategic solutions that perform in maintenance and daily use. That is why we proudly present the Green City approach from Escofet 1886, a leading international manufacturer. It is a proven method, applied worldwide, to make urban greening feasible, scalable and future-focused.

A practical guide for those who want to make a difference today

Download the Green City broc​hure and discover how smart planter layouts and layered vegetation raise comfort, biodiversity and legibility in any space, even on sites with utilities, limited room or a temporary character.

Green that structures and performs

Using green as a design strategy means planting is not décor but a spatial tool. Linear planters become green curtains that soften façades, mark desire lines and define zones. Green islands build intimacy and coolth with layered vegetation, with edges that double as seating and shelter. The result is micro-ecosystems that bring human scale and ecological resilience together.

Senses and seasons lift the street-level experience. Blossom and foliage colour create recognisability throughout the year, scent and texture make places tactile, and the soft rustle of leaves dampens harsh noise. With the right mixes you orchestrate colour across seasons and anchor a square, campus or care environment in its own identity.

Fast greening without breaking ground. Not every town or municipality wants to open up paving and substructure immediately. Many planter solutions can, depending on mass and substrate, be placed freestanding. That enables temporary or phased greening with minimal disruption and no heavy works. Configurations can be expanded or anchored later when the context allows.

Building blocks of a living urban landscape

The following blocks below show how to move from loose objects to functional, biodiverse micro-landscapes. The brochure includes diagrams, compositions and a model index for each block to accelerate delivery.

Biodiversity layers

Work with a layered palette of groundcovers, perennials, shrubs and trees. Start species selection from shade, wind and use intensity rather than pure aesthetics. This puts the right plant in the right place and builds robust, low-maintenance plant communities. Concrete rooting depths and combinations are included in the brochure.

Form and volume

The geometry and height of planters determine privacy, views and scale. Use taller linear formats to create green curtains for filtering and orientation, use islands to shape rooms for staying. Beware of scale errors: items that are too small or scattered have little effect. Choose rhythm and repetition so green forms a legible pattern.

Topography and water management

Subtle relief creates moisture gradients and improves growing conditions. Place species with higher water needs lower and drought-tolerant species higher. Link this to simple flows such as inlets and overflows that are easy to inspect during maintenance. Sections and sample slopes are shown in the brochure.

Material choice and circularity

Architectural concrete is dimensionally stable, vandal-resistant and low maintenance. Its thermal mass protects the root zone in summer and stabilises temperature. In parks or residential squares a hybrid approach with tactile accents in timber or steel can raise seating comfort. Working towards circular goals, choose variants with recycled aggregates where possible. The brochure explains finishes and colours per family, so texture and reflection help reduce heat stress and support visual harmony.

Accessibility, comfort and management

Edges can provide seating and selected families offer accessories that improve comfort and inclusion. Design for maintenance from the start: plan pruning routes, choose volumes that keep substrate quality stable and position elements for visibility and social safety. This keeps Total Cost of Ownership low and ecological value high.

Design smarter, more specifically and faster

The Green City brochure contains worked-out sections, planting schemes and to-scale product combinations. You move from vision to specification without guesswork, useful in every design and procurement phase. 

Practical guidelines in plain language

This section translates the brochure’s principles into concrete street-level choices. We work with reference values you apply to context, with attention to sightlines, lighting and maintenance logic, so planters and green islands contribute to climate-adaptive, accessible public space. We start with privacy and safety, then build out with scale, maintenance and species selection.

Privacy without compromising safety

Good privacy does not need to undermine social safety. Use reference values, protect sightlines and combine green with appropriate lighting. Routes remain legible and the place feels comfortable for all users after dark.

• Height reference values: in seated areas about 1.30 m total height, planter plus planting, acts as a clear screen. In predominantly standing areas about 1.90 m forms a strong visual barrier. Always apply contextually.
• Sightlines: keep views to paths, entrances and crossings. Break up long opaque screens and avoid creating hiding corners behind planters.
• Lighting: choose uniform light distribution with low glare and clear transitions between light and dark. Faces and direction of travel should remain recognisable.
• Flow: provide cut-throughs and widths that allow crossing, so people do not drift to unsafe edges or carriageways.
• Positioning: avoid placing planters tight against blind façades or dense hedges. Allow distance where needed and open corners for social controle.
• Maintenance and seasons: plan pruning and maintenance routes so sightlines are retained in leaf season. Prevent encroachment that swallows paths.
• Inclusion in practice: design with attention for women at dusk, older people, parents with buggies and people with disabilities. Keep tactile guiding lines clear and respect free passage widths.

Teaser: the brochure contains diagrams and sample layouts combining privacy and safety.

Avoid classic greening mistakes

Small interventions only add up when they form a legible pattern and remain manageable. The pitfalls below are common and easy to avoid.

• Scale and distribution: items that are too small and isolated achieve little. Work with rhythm and repetition so green offers orientation and shelter rather than fragmentation.
• Forgetting maintenance: without a maintenance logic, water issues and plant loss emerge. Plan inlets, overflows and pruning routes in advance and position elements so inspection is simple.
• Species choice without context: start from shade, wind and use intensity. Adapt the mix to the site and avoid species that cannot handle local stressors.
• Mixing movement, traffic and dwelling: without a buffer, flow and stay functions clash. Use green edges as guides and protection between walking, cycling and seating zones. 

From single-purpose to multi-purpose

Where public space often assigns one function to a place, planters and green islands combine multiple qualities in the same square metre. You structure routes and make waiting areas recognisable while adding stay quality through shade, shelter and places to sit in the shade of green.

On campuses, in care settings and residential squares, use shifts through the day. With modular, green-led design you scale with peak moments and create places for short breaks, encounter and calm waiting. Climate-adaptive public space grows step by step with daily use.

In dense urban contexts underground conflicts often hamper full depaving. Concrete planters and green-island configurations then offer a realistic, phased route. You can start with freestanding placement without breaking ground, anchor or expand later, and meanwhile gain biodiversity, water-wise design and heat-stress reduction.

By using year-round colour, tactile materials and well-judged heights, a square or promenade remains attractive and legible outside the high season too.

Depaving and greening in the Benelux and beyond

Flanders and the Netherlands encourage residents and authorities to replace paving through tile-swap programmes, adding plants, trees and infiltrating surfaces. The sense of friendly competition, with public tile counters, makes greening visible and measurable at neighbourhood level and creates opportunities to link green islands to pavements, squares and play streets.

Green streets show how streets can green and sometimes blue with residents, with façade gardens, depaved front yards and planting beds. Local pilots show this not only lowers heat stress but also raises social cohesion and comfort. Where underground constraints exist, planters and green islands are a fast, scalable lever to make street profiles more liveable.

Let’s take inspiration from abroad at the home base of Escofet 1886. In Barcelona, Superilla Sant Antoni shows how reallocating over twenty-six thousand square metres of public space makes room for green, staying and slow traffic. The use of Escofet furniture in the final scheme illustrates how spatial quality and green structures can reinforce each other in a dense fabric.

A second reference is the M. Assumpció Català Gardens, an inner block of about seven hundred and twenty square metres with underground constraints. By using Crown planters and seating, a high-quality green framework was created. Both examples show how the Green City approach can achieve social, ecological and spatial impact in the short term without having to renew all substructure everywhere.

From vision to applied reality in your municipality.
Be inspired by proven international approaches and local applications.  Download the Green City guide and translate climate-adaptive ambitions into feasible, phased interventions for streets, squares and campuses.

What will you learn in this guide?

Design principles that work: a compact framework to translate geometry, senses, water and topography into concrete interventions. Clear illustrations show the step from concept to delivery.

Planting schemes by purpose: compositions with reference species for privacy, year-round colour, trailing and climbing plants and stay quality. Exact combinations and sections are in the brochure.

Technical model index: an overview of planter and green-island families with dimensions, volumes and finish options. Align choices with maintenance, use intensity and context.

Management principles with a TCO focus: practical handles to design with maintenance in mind. Think inspectable inlets and overflows, reachable pruning routes and volumes that safeguard substrate quality.

From temporary to permanent in phases: an approach for temporary or pop-up greening you can scale up or anchor later. Make quick impact while working towards a permanent solution.

Conclusion and rationale

The Green City brochure bundles the know-how of Escofet 1886 in a practical guide for towns, cities and design teams. Escofet combines more than a century of experience in architectural concrete with current insights in biodiversity, water-wise design and accessibility. The result is not a product list but an evidence-based handbook with diagrams, compositions and a model index that directly helps you make better choices in ongoing and future projects.

Download the brochure, apply the insights in specifications, pilots and neighbourhood programmes and make a difference square metre by square metre.

Download the Escofet Green City brochure

Questions or suggestions?

Would you like to test the brochure’s insights against your site, maintenance and timeline? Plan a conversation with Servibo. We translate the principles into project-specific choices and realistic phasing, and we provide detailed information when it is relevant for your next step.

Contact us for more information or an advisory moment. Email us at info@servibo.be or use our contact button below and we will get in touch.

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