{"id":1282,"date":"2026-05-04T10:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T08:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fundacionsferrer.org\/?p=1282"},"modified":"2026-05-04T11:03:31","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T09:03:31","slug":"parlem-amb-les-investigadores-del-creaf-que-desenvolupen-lestudi-healthycities4all-als-horts-green-for-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fundacionsferrer.org\/en\/parlem-amb-les-investigadores-del-creaf-que-desenvolupen-lestudi-healthycities4all-als-horts-green-for-good\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking to the CREAF researchers who are leading the HealthyCities4All study at the Green for Good Urban Gardens"},"content":{"rendered":"

The investigators\u00a0Corina Basnou<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Sandra Calduch<\/strong>\u00a0are responsible for the project\u00a0HealthyCities4All<\/a>, a project being developed at the Green for Good community gardens as a result of the alliance of Green For Good Foundation<\/a> with <\/strong><\/span>Centre for Ecological Research and Forest Applications (CREAF). <\/strong><\/a>Through this project, the role of plants as indicators of air and soil quality is investigated, as well as their potential.\u00a0Urban social gardens<\/strong>\u00a0to generate\u00a0applied scientific knowledge<\/strong>\u00a0environmental challenges.<\/p>\n

Through the analysis of crops such as\u00a0Swiss chards<\/strong>, the project studies the relationship between\u00a0Biodiversity, pollution and health<\/strong>, and highlights the\u00a0gardens with living laboratories<\/strong>\u00a0at the service of\u00a0urban transformation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2013 How was the HealthyCities4All project born and what makes it innovative within urban health research?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Corina Basnou:<\/em> It is a project that was born thanks to the collaboration of the Ferrer Green for Good Foundation, and it was an excellent synergy between the Foundation and the research we do at CREAF. In fact, it is a study that complements years of monitoring air quality and the so-called urban health monitoring, which began some years ago at CREAF.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Why is it important to study the relationship between social urban gardens and the environmental health of cities?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Corina Basnou:<\/em>\u00a0Urban gardens are biodiversity oases in cities. They are what are known as nature-based solutions, which bring many ecosystem services and a lot of biodiversity to a city, but they are also living laboratories that allow us to carry out monitoring related to air quality. We use plants as bioindicators and try to understand the stories that the leaves tell us. The fact that almost everything grown in the garden is edible helps us, on the one hand, to see if what is consumed is healthy for ingestion, for human health, but it also allows us to incorporate the idea of\u00a0to use plants as bioindicators and to see, through studies of contaminant concentrations in leaf tissue, what the air quality and soil quality are<\/strong>\u00a0also.<\/p>\n

\u2013 What have the Ferrer Green for Good Foundation's urban social gardens been able to contribute to your research?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Corina Basnou:<\/em>\u00a0I think, firstly, it gives us\u00a0an opportunity to have access to these living labs and also to integrate this more social vision that the Ferrer Green for Good Foundation has.<\/strong> It allows us to incorporate the perspective of all users a little, in this case that of a school environment. It's great to see that it's a garden that is also used as an outdoor classroom. I believe it's the start of future collaborations. Each time we come here and discuss it with the Foundation, we come up with new ideas for further research.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Why did you choose chard as a species to analyse pollution?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Corina Basnou:<\/em>\u00a0We needed vegetables, so edible plants, but also plants with wide leaves. The wider the leaf, the more assimilation and the easier it is to get results.<\/p>\n

Which indicators allow you to detect the presence of contaminants through the leaves?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Corina Basnou:<\/em> We carry out a leaf analysis to understand the air quality a little, but also whether the plant is healthy or not. In this case, we only use heavy metals as indicators, and these are important because they are part of air pollution and are very toxic. The plant needs some essential metals, not all of which are toxic, to grow, for its metabolism, for photosynthesis, such as manganese, iron, zinc, etc. But some of these, even though they are essential, are not good for the plant if they are present in too high a quantity and can become toxic. But then we have some heavy metals that are all toxic and that the plant does not need, such as cadmium or lead. In this case,\u00a0when we detect these metals in the plant we already know we have a significant contamination problem, either in the air or the soil.<\/strong>\u00a0And this allows us to make much more precise analyses than with a sensor. As we don't have all these sensors around the city, we use these leaves as sensors.<\/p>\n

What health risks do these heavy metals pose to humans?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Corina Basnou:<\/em>\u00a0These heavy metals found in the air, which result from brake dust, for example, or can come from fires, fertilisers, landfill sites, but which are above all related to traffic, can pose significant health risks.<\/strong>\u00a0For example, some of the highly toxic heavy metals that are carcinogenic (like nickel, cadmium or lead) accumulate in the bones, kidneys, liver, and are very persistent, and can build up in the body for decades.<\/p>\n

\u2013 It's still early to draw conclusions, but what do you expect to find?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sandra Calduch<\/em>\u00a0We do not expect to find harmful results regarding the consumption of the chard, as they were not found in previous studies conducted in other gardens located in high-traffic areas of Barcelona. We hope this will serve to monitor long-term environmental pollution through the leaves.<\/p>\n

\u2013 What was your research hypothesis?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Corina Basnou:<\/em> Our hypothesis was that everything grown in Barcelona's urban gardens, which are managed ecologically, is healthier than what we buy at the market or supermarket. We didn't get to make this comparison with supermarket products, but so far we haven't found any contamination. The consumption of these cultivated products does not pose any risk to human health.<\/strong>\u00a0However, we did find clear indications of heavy metal contamination in the air.<\/p>\n

\u2013 How can your findings influence the design of future cities?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Corina Basnou:<\/em>\u00a0The long-term results would be much more interesting when it comes to helping design more sustainable urban planning and urban mobility policies related to air quality.<\/strong>\u00a0Because we did find very clear links with traffic. We found heavy metals in the air, at various points in Barcelona, and we did find clear indications of pollution related to traffic.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Talk about an economical and easy-to-apply methodology: what does it consist of exactly?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sandra Calduch<\/em> Ultimately, it's because we're harvesting beetroot leaves instead of using environmental pollution sensors, which are more expensive to install. So, it's a simple enough methodology that can be easily replicated in various places around the city.<\/p>\n

Are international projects being developed in this regard?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Corina Basnou:<\/em>\u00a0There is still a lot of education to be done, as I am not sure if all cities are aware of these benefits, this opportunity and this ease of incorporating plants, leaves, as indicators of urban pollution.<\/p>\n

\u2013 How does this research connect with the principles of permaculture and regenerative agriculture?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sandra Calduch<\/em>\u00a0In these types of gardens, fertilisers are not used. Instead, the association of different cultivated species and crop rotation are taken into account to generally improve soil quality. This is also because organic compounds and plants that attract wildlife which fights against potential pests are used, instead of pesticides.<\/p>\n

\u2013 How do you imagine the cities of the future if this type of initiative is scaled up?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sandra Calduch<\/em>\u00a0Ideally,\u00a0It would be ideal to have these types of urban gardens within each neighbourhood community, or for each school to have these types of gardens.<\/strong> Ultimately, you have a green space and a biodiversity space, but also a space where people can interact. In the end, you have all the elements that contribute to the health, not only of the environment, but also of the people in a city. In fact, here, in the La Mina neighbourhood, this space contributes to increasing the amount of green space in the neighbourhood itself.<\/p>\n

Corina Basnou:<\/em>\u00a0Ideally, every school should have a space like this<\/strong>, a social urban garden like this, and even greener, more biodiverse. And I also imagine fewer grey spaces and more green and biodiverse spaces. Even, with more stratification of vegetation. I also imagine more spaces like this next to hospitals and closer to people with certain disabilities. Even more inclusive spaces. More spaces like these for the elderly, for hospital patients, etcetera.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Les investigadores\u00a0Corina Basnou\u00a0i\u00a0Sandra Calduch\u00a0s\u00f3n les responsables del projecte\u00a0HealthyCities4All, un projecte que s\u2019est\u00e0 desenvolupant als horts Green for Good fruit de l\u2019alian\u00e7a de la Fundaci\u00f3 Green For Good amb el Centre de Recerca Ecol\u00f2gica i Aplicacions Forestals (CREAF). A trav\u00e9s d\u2019aquest projecte s\u2019investiga el paper de les plantes com a indicadors de la qualitat de l\u2019aire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fundacio-ferrer-green-for-good"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundacionsferrer.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundacionsferrer.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundacionsferrer.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundacionsferrer.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundacionsferrer.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1282"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/fundacionsferrer.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1297,"href":"https:\/\/fundacionsferrer.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282\/revisions\/1297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundacionsferrer.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundacionsferrer.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundacionsferrer.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundacionsferrer.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}