Ducklings swim in convoy behind their mum alongside Catharijnesingel canal in Utrecht. It’s the one tailback you’ll see right here as of late, now the motorway has gone. 

I watch them and picture the tabloid-fuelled frenzy that will ensue in Britain if one among its cities turned a six-lane street right into a canal for pleasure boating and nature. A lot uproar in Utrecht? “Not likely,” Paul Manten, who led the venture, tells me, as we stroll alongside the canal’s flower-strewn banks. “A couple of individuals who go in every single place by automobile didn’t prefer it.” 

Many others noticed it as righting a historic incorrect. A canal flowed right here from as early as 1122, when it was dug as a defence line for town. It was controversially stuffed in with concrete within the Sixties, when the world went gung-ho for automobiles. Cue a referendum in 2002, when residents voted to convey the water again. Although Covid scuppered the long-awaited grand reopening in 2020, it additionally sparked a renaissance in lively journey in different cities – a vindication for Utrecht, which, in accordance with Manten, spent circa €1bn (£860m) restoring Catharijnesingel. 

“We have been forward of our time,” he says, as boats cross by, carrying gilet-wearing passengers with glasses of wine of their palms. “In all places is making an attempt to do that now, make their cities greener.” 

Nowhere, maybe, is doing it with extra grace than Utrecht, a metropolis taking inexperienced residing to the subsequent stage. A brief trip from Catharijnesingel, a verdant tower block is taking form behind the practice station. Wonderwoods Vertical Forest is a brand new workplace and residential advanced that may, when full, double as a 2.5-acre woodland. I search for on the bushes swaying on the balconies above, the flowers draped over balustrades. 

“I really feel privileged to work on this,” says venture supervisor, Hedzer Pathuis, who meets me onsite. It’s a Friday afternoon and employees are downing instruments because the close by pub will get busy. 

When it’s accomplished (later this yr, apparently), Wonderwoods will heave with 360 bushes, 9,000 bushes and 10,000 crops. “There’s loads of rain in Holland,” says Pathuis, as darkish clouds threaten to show his level. “Within the basement there’s a basin that collects it. When it’s dry, we pump it up – hoses go to each plant.” 

If that seems like quite a lot of repairs, that’s as a result of it’s. Who’s going to do all of the pruning? “An organization has been contracted for 25 years to keep up the inexperienced,” says Pathuis. It’s a service that may value residents round €60 (£51) a month – equal to a bouquet of flowers every week. Not an insignificant sum. And after 25 years? “The residents affiliation must determine what to do.”

I image residing there. Consuming espresso on a leafy balcony as day breaks over Utrecht. In response to Pathius, 60 of the 420 residences will likely be “reasonably priced”. “Most hire €1,000 (£854) a month for 20 years,” he says, desirous to level out that it’s an inclusive growth. It’s not simply flats. The constructing may even have a cultural area for occasions and exhibitions, a winter backyard and workplaces. 

So, is that this the inexperienced way forward for high-rise residing? “It’s a pilot,” cautions Pathuis. Unknowns abound, mainly: do its eco credentials add up? 

Designed by Italy’s Stefano Boeri Architetti, Wonderwoods was commissioned in 2016, when the web zero dialog was in its infancy. “The CO2 dialogue was completely different then to what it’s now,” says Pathuis, as one other tree is hoisted above us. “The constructing wants quite a lot of concrete and metal as a result of the crops are heavy, so from a CO2 standpoint I don’t assume it scores excessive. However the inexperienced is enhancing well being, so it’s a trade-off.” 

Wonderwoods is, if nothing else, an architectural assertion, a gauntlet laid right down to problem different architects to design for nature, not simply individuals. 

I get again on the bike and trip out to a different website providing a much less glamorous, however most likely extra sensible, imaginative and prescient of the way forward for structure. I’m going by way of the world’s first cycle lane – a reminder that Utrecht has at all times been a inexperienced pioneer – and thru town’s new multistorey bike park, the world’s largest, the place commuters unlock rickety previous cycles. 

Whenever you trip round Utrecht, feeling the breeze in your face, catching snippets of chatter from passing cyclists, you realise that the Dutch are successful on the complete constructing habitable cities factor. It’s why ‘creativeness activist’ Rob Hopkins comes right here. Utrecht, he instructed me in a latest interview, is a metropolis the place “the longer term has already arrived”. Hopkins recorded the sound of town’s cycle lanes in rush hour for Area Recordings from the Future, a music venture to encourage a eager for a cleaner, greener, extra human future. 

It’s a soothing sound that accompanies me to Hof van Cartesius, a ramshackle inventive quarter for round entrepreneurs. 

“It’s all constructed from waste materials,” explains Iris Dijkstra, an area information who exhibits me round. “It’s enjoyable, isn’t it?” I go searching. Youngsters play on a pale water slide salvaged from a theme park, eyeing up the previous boat marooned within the backyard. Industrial crates heave with flowers.    

“Each constructing has a narrative,” says Robin Brink, who runs Warmoes restaurant. “Ours is made partly out of fixing rooms from a swimming pool.” 

Report labels, sustainable style manufacturers and designers are among the many startups based mostly at Hof van Cartesius. There’s a reclamation yard, too, the place individuals can hire a bench and instruments for €10 (£8.50) an hour. 

“Individuals can use the workshop to regulate their purchase,” says Sijmen Houben, exhibiting me round. “It began in Rotterdam, now there’s one right here and in Antwerp. It could be good if this caught on in every single place, no?” I’d been having the identical thought for many of the day.

Principal picture: Liset Verberne