19 September 2026 3:52 am
Iraq’s Housing Boom: Opportunities and Challenges

Iraq’s Housing Boom: Opportunities and Challenges

Aug 28, 2026

Silhouette of skyscrapers and cranes at sunset in Baghdad, Iraq. by Muhammad Nabeel via Pexels best illustrates how Iraq’s housing boom is presently made of opportunities but also of challenges.

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Iraq’s housing boom is leaving its aspirational class behind

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AMWAJ – 27 August 2026

Iraq/Economy 

Iraq's Housing Boom: Opportunities and Challenges

Lyna Ouandjeli

By Lyna Ouandjeli

In Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, a young professional said she considers herself fortunate by earning some two million IQD (1,500 USD) a month, but that buying an apartment remains a distant prospect. A modest 65 m² (700 sq ft) unit she had her eyes on cost approximately 52.8M IQD (40,000 USD). The down payment alone, she told Amwaj.media, would require saving two-thirds of her monthly wage for two years.

This dilemma is common in Iraq these days. The country urgently needs more housing for its rising population, yet a growing number of Iraqis with relatively stable incomes cannot afford much of what is being built. Despite a construction boom in recent years, the nationwide housing deficit remains substantial, and new real estate alone cannot resolve the problem. Rather, the more important question is whether authorities in Baghdad and Erbil can produce enough affordable housing for those who need it.

 

Bismayah’s unfinished promise

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) estimates that Iraq faces a cumulative housing deficit of 2.5M to 3.5M units. A wave of new initiatives promises to close that gap. Egypt’s Talaat Moustafa Group won a 2026 license for a 43,000-unit smart city near Baghdad while Dubai’s DAMAC has launched luxury towers of its own. Iraq’s Ministry of Construction and Housing is also planning several satellite cities around the capital.

In parallel, the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al-Zaidi has introduced its flagship “One Million Residential Plots.” The platform is intended to boost construction across the country and is set to launch in Sept. 2026.

Those efforts have made little dent in the housing shortfall so far. Iraq’s own department of statistics reports that private construction permits, a rough proxy for building activity, have actually fallen in recent years—from 37,442 in 2022 to 25,934 in 2025. These numbers are far short of the roughly 250,000 units a year the government says are needed just to keep pace with new demand.

The case of the Bismayah New City development, located 10 km (6.2 miles) southeast of Baghdad, illustrates these challenges. Launched in 2012 as a key component of Iraq’s 2010 National Housing Program, the sprawling 18.3 km² (7.1 sq mi) project was designed to provide around 100,000 housing units for 600,000 people under a subsidized homeownership scheme.

A 100 m² unit in Bismayah costs a fixed 83.16M IQD (63,000 USD)—a fraction of the equivalent in Baghdad’s broader private market. Comparable apartments in the capital range from 900,000–9.24M IQD (680-7,000 USD) per m² (10.76 sq ft) depending on the neighborhood. That gap helps explain both the pressure on Bismayah’s waiting list and why so much of the capital’s private housing stock remains out of reach for ordinary buyers.

However, the South Korean firm tapped for the project, Hanwha Engineering & Construction, halted construction in 2020 after Baghdad fell behind on payments. The company only completed around 30,000 homes before work resumed in late 2024 under a revised contract that covers an additional 70,000 units. By Dec. 2024, Iraq’s National Investment Commission said around 21,480 of the completed units had been handed over and were already occupied by residents.

Last year, the investment commission tightened conditions for reopening applications, and claimed that around 70,000 people had registered to be allocated unbuilt units at the flagship housing complex via the government’s ‘Ur’ platform.

Bismayah’s fortunes reflect how building housing and ensuring access are different problems. Initially, the project’s terms for prospective buyers required a 25% down payment, but this was later reduced to 10%, with the balance to be repaid over 15 years. The 2024 contract for the project’s remaining units extended that repayment window to up to 25 years. That repeated loosening of terms suggests the state has had to keep adapting financing conditions because unit costs and household purchasing power do not naturally align.

Similar housing struggles have played out in Iraqi Kurdistan, although in a different kind of market. Over the past decade, the semi-autonomous region’s capital has seen a remarkable expansion of apartment developments, gated communities and large residential compounds. Yet, despite this uneven boom, affordability has deteriorated for many middle-income households.

One study covering 2024 housing prices in Erbil found that a 100 m² (1,076 sq ft) low-income reference apartment cost approximately 91.08M IQD (69,000 USD). That represented a price-to-income ratio of 23.1 years for those who earned the median household income in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2023, approximately 328,680 IQD (250 USD) a month. For buyers already active in the market and with higher incomes, the ratio was 4.4 years.

Unaffordability in Iraqi Kurdistan, as in other parts of Iraq, has been exacerbated by limited access to mortgages, high property prices as well as dependence on savings and informal financing. Erbil’s urban landscape can therefore have thousands of apartments for sale while those earning the median income cannot realistically buy one. Even higher earners face a multi-year climb to ownership.

Iraq’s wider housing problem should not be understood exclusively through the language of poverty. A teacher, engineer, doctor or civil servant can have a stable income and still be unable to accumulate the capital to buy a home. This does not mean that Iraq’s traditionally high rates of homeownership have suddenly collapsed.

Rather, it points to a generational divide. Older Iraqis may already own their homes, while those entering the market now increasingly face having to rent a property, borrowing heavily or relying on family wealth. Formal mortgage financing in Iraq remains weak, particularly in Iraqi Kurdistan. This leaves prospective buyers dependent on savings, family assistance, remittances and developer installment plans, meaning that income does not necessarily translate into asset ownership.

A middle-class crisis

Homeownership in Iraq has long meant wealth and security beyond mere shelter. If younger generations are priced out of the property market, housing risks reproducing existing wealth disparities across generations. This is a trend visible in the Kurdistan region, where the number of home and apartment renters increased by 16.6% between 2018 and 2024, from 228,679 to 266,600.

Housing in Iraq is not only viewed as shelter, but a key economic asset. Where investment opportunities remain slim and financial markets underdeveloped, land and real estate can function as stores of wealth, generating investor demand alongside genuine housing need. However, while an investor can wait for a property to appreciate, a family needs somewhere to live. The dramatic dinar devaluation in 2020 appears to have reinforced this dynamic and ushed wealthier dollar-holding Iraqis toward property as a hedge to protect their purchasing power.

Corruption compounds Iraq’s affordability problem, with real estate reportedly becoming a favored vehicle for money laundering. Wealthy individuals and politically connected groups have been accused of funnelling illicit funds into real estate, partly to avoid growing scrutiny of international money transfers. Experts blame this for driving up prices unrelated to genuine housing needs. Against this backdrop, one housing-sector official alleged to Amwaj.media that businessmen have at times acquired and resold subsidized units at a profit, with officials often turning a blind eye.

But the private sector and rampant corruption cannot hold all the blame for Iraq’s housing woes. The authorities have repeatedly intervened by building and subsidizing public housing units directly. Still, Iraqi Kurdistan’s experience shows this too can fail to deliver affordability. Between 2011 and 2013, government-subsidized housing units in the Kurdistan region were estimated to cost between 60–80% more than comparable private-market alternatives, while household incomes rose only marginally.

Researchers have attributed the gap less to graft than to fragmented procurement, where units pass through multiple approval stages and absorb costly revisions once awarded. Access is also largely tied to state employment rather than open-market choice. The real subsidy lies in 25-year, below-market financing rather than a lower price, which makes beneficiaries’ own monthly payments more accessible—but in practice, no cheaper than the private market.

The debate on housing in Iraq focuses mainly on how many units get built, and less on who ultimately captures their value once construction ends. A government that subsidizes property without controlling eligibility, resale and affordability risks underwriting private wealth rather than affordable housing. The country’s real estate market needs conditions for investors to profit from housing that Iraqis can afford; with public land could go to developers only in exchange for binding affordability requirements.

Housing projects like Bismayah show that federal Iraq can build at an extraordinary scale, while Erbil shows how a construction boom can coexist with severe affordability constraints. Together, both point to a national housing system that remains dangerously out of alignment. A generation of aspirational Iraqis who can work but cannot convert their income into assets will remain caught in a crisis of social mobility, not just a housing shortage. 

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Lyna Ouandjeli

Lyna Ouandjeli is a researcher and consultant specializing in geopolitics, conflict analysis, migration, governance and international … Full Bio

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US-Iran War Spurs Energy Transition Across Continents

US-Iran War Spurs Energy Transition Across Continents

Aug 27, 2026

Colorful pushpins marking locations on a detailed map of Central Asia. by Lara Jameson via Pexels

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US-Iran war spurs Europe, Asia to boost renewables 

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By Kate Abnett, Nina Chestney and Sudarshan Varadhan

EURONEXT –

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US-Iran War Spurs Energy Transition Across Continents

 

BRUSSELS/LONDON/SINGAPORE, Aug 26 (Reuters) – Six months into the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, governments across Europe and Asia are scrambling to accelerate a renewables build-out in a bid to cut dependence on fossil fuel imports, providing a fresh impetus to the global energy transition.

As the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has choked off a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments, governments from South Korea and Thailand to the European Union have pledged to increase funding for renewables.

Has the conflict delivered a boon to the clean energy transition? Here are some ways to measure the impact.

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US-Iran War Spurs Energy Transition Across Continents

RENEWABLES ARE SURGING, BUT COAL IS ALSO UP

Renewable power output is soaring across the world, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) expects it to become the top electricity source for the first time this year.

Since the war began, rooftop solar has proved attractive because it is quick and cheap to install. In the Philippines, high power prices driven by costlier imported fuel are pushing households and businesses onto solar, while a battery subsidy scheme is fuelling a rooftop resurgence in Australia.

European demand for rooftop systems has also jumped since the war began.

But coal is rising too. With the Strait of Hormuz closed and renewables still unable to guarantee round-the-clock power, coal-fired generation is set to grow — though the IEA’s forecast 8.5% jump in renewable output this year dwarfs the 1.4% rise in coal.

In the United States, where President Donald Trump has opposed green energy, renewable generation rose 10% in the first half of the year from the same period in 2025.

EMISSIONS ARE STILL CLIMBING

Even as renewable generation surges, the IEA expects emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change to rise 1.1% this year to an all-time high of 14.2 billion tonnes.

In 2027, the IEA expects coal output to dip by 0.7%, but gas-fired power generation to rise 1.5% from this year’s levels. Curbing climate change will require even more renewable energy and investments in power grids and energy storage.

ASIA BEARS THE BRUNT

Asian economies most dependent on oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz have absorbed the sharpest shock.

China leaned hard into solar, with output rising more than three times as fast as coal between March and July. India, Vietnam and South Korea went the other way, burning more coal. Some European countries also saw extra coal burn, but the IEA expects EU coal generation to resume its decade-long decline in 2026.

Last month, the Vietnamese government said it was considering building more coal plants to secure supply — despite pledging at the 2021 U.N. climate summit to build no new coal after 2030.

TRANSPORT

Most of the world’s oil is burned as transport fuel — in cars, trucks, ships and planes. The war has not collapsed that demand, but it has reversed the growth forecasters had pencilled in.

Higher prices, reduced air travel, softer Chinese consumption and faster EV adoption mean the world is now likely using less oil for transport than projected before the war. Goldman Sachs estimates gasoline-related demand fell about 20% at the April peak of the disruption; GL Consulting puts the drop nearer 15%.

Costlier fuel has pushed drivers toward EVs, and China — the world’s biggest maker — has seen its EV export value top $10 billion for the first time this year.

Electric models made up 63% of the country’s passenger-car retail sales in June, up from 53% a year earlier, according to BofA analysts, who estimate electrification explains roughly a third of China’s year-to-date decline in crude imports.

EV sales have also soared across Europe since the war began as high oil prices have caused pain at the pump.

HOW LONG WILL IT LAST?

As long as Hormuz stays shut, high oil and gas prices are likely to persist, strengthening the case for countries to invest in cheaper, home-grown renewables and reduce their exposure to volatile fuel costs. But whether a shift away from oil and gas gathers even more momentum is difficult to predict.

“Changing a nation’s energy mix requires investments, and higher interest rates will make the considerable upfront capital required for renewables and power grids more expensive. Thus, while the present conflict is likely to ultimately favour decarbonization, it is not a one-way street,” said Sverre Alvik, vice president and energy transition outlook director at DNV.

Many large Asian markets have substantial gas and coal resources to provide a buffer against Middle East supply disruptions and a lot more U.S. LNG supply is expected to come online between 2026 and 2030.

“As this supply materialises, LNG should become more affordable for import-dependent Asian markets, reducing the incentive for a permanent shift away from gas driven solely by the current conflict,” said Victor del Carpio Neyra, senior research associate at Aurora Energy Research.

 

(Reporting by Kate Abnett in Brussels, Nina Chestney in London and Sudarshan Varadhan in Singapore; Editing by Conor Humphries)

 

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The Poverty Cost of a Hotter MENA Is Showing Up Everywhere

The Poverty Cost of a Hotter MENA Is Showing Up Everywhere

Aug 25, 2026

High-rise residential buildings in Tripoli, showcasing urban life in Lebanon. by Alexander Popovkin via Pexels

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The Poverty Cost of a Hotter MENA Is Showing Up in Wallets and Child Health

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The Poverty Cost of a Hotter MENA Is Showing Up in Wallets and Child Health

Credit: ChatGPT

Climate change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is increasingly becoming a question of household survival, public health and economic resilience rather than temperature alone. A study titled “Climate Change and Poverty in the MENA Region: Evidence from a Panel ARDL Model Using Household Consumption and Infant Mortality,” published in the journal Climate, examines how shifting climatic conditions are associated with both material well-being and child health across the region.

The research was conducted by Aziz Razzouki, Mounsif Ridaoui, Fadma Razzouki, Mohamed Oudgou, Mustapha Ouatmane and Abdeslam Boudhar. Using data from 22 MENA countries between 2000 and 2023, the researchers examine poverty through two different lenses: real household consumption expenditure and infant mortality.

The key insight is that climate vulnerability does not operate through a single channel or on a single timetable. Higher temperatures are associated with weaker household consumption in the short run and greater infant mortality in the long run, suggesting that climate stress can simultaneously erode economic security and deepen health-related deprivation.

Heat Is No Longer Just an Environmental Risk

The research highlights an immediate relationship between temperature and household consumption. In the preferred model, a 1% increase in annual average temperature is associated with an 8.4182% decline in real household consumption expenditure in the short run, although the estimate is statistically significant only at the 10% level. The authors suggest that higher temperatures may weaken household spending capacity through channels such as lower agricultural productivity, higher food prices and reduced incomes.

Household consumption is more than an economic statistic; it reflects whether families can continue paying for food, transport, healthcare and other basic needs when shocks hit. In a region where agriculture remains exposed to rainfall variability and water scarcity, climate stress can quickly become a purchasing-power problem. The policy challenge now is to prevent temporary climate shocks from pushing vulnerable households into deeper and more persistent deprivation.

The longer-term health findings reinforce this concern. A 1% increase in temperature is associated with roughly 0.093 additional infant deaths per 1,000 live births in the long run, holding other variables constant. The researchers explicitly caution that this is an association rather than evidence of direct causality, but the result still points to a troubling link between hotter conditions and child-health vulnerability.

What makes this particularly important is the slower nature of health-related deprivation. Household expenditure can fall relatively quickly, but health outcomes reflect the accumulated effects of nutrition, sanitation, maternal health, service access and infrastructure. The study’s error-correction results suggest that infant mortality adjusts more slowly than household consumption, underlining how climate shocks may leave a longer institutional and human-development imprint.

Poverty Reduction Cannot Be Separated From Macroeconomic Stability

The study finds that GDP per capita is strongly associated with better poverty-related outcomes, linking higher income levels with stronger household consumption and lower infant mortality. In the long run, a 1% increase in GDP per capita is associated with a 1.5626% increase in real household consumption expenditure and approximately 0.0446 fewer infant deaths per 1,000 live births. The significance is that climate resilience cannot be built independently of economic resilience. Countries with stronger incomes, infrastructure and public services generally have greater capacity to absorb shocks, finance adaptation and protect vulnerable groups. Conversely, where fiscal space is limited and household incomes are already fragile, the same climatic disturbance can generate much larger social consequences.

Inflation adds another layer of risk. The study finds a positive long-run association between inflation and infant mortality, suggesting that rising prices can contribute to worsening health-related poverty by eroding household purchasing power. This is particularly relevant in economies where food costs and imported essentials account for a large share of household expenditure, making price instability an important transmission channel between macroeconomic shocks and human welfare.

Climate adaptation and macroeconomic management need to be treated as complementary agendas. When heat, drought, food-price pressure and weak income growth occur simultaneously, households face compound rather than isolated risks. Protecting purchasing power during such periods may therefore be just as important as investing in physical adaptation infrastructure.

Education and Health Systems Are Part of Climate Resilience

Education stands out as a significant determinant of health-related poverty. A 1% increase in gross primary-school enrollment is associated with approximately 0.2403 fewer infant deaths per 1,000 live births in the long run. The researchers interpret this relationship as evidence that education and human capital can strengthen resilience by improving health knowledge, access to services and household capacity to manage economic and environmental shocks.

It widens the definition of climate policy considerably. Investments in education may rarely be labeled as adaptation spending, yet the findings suggest that stronger human capital can reduce some of the social vulnerabilities through which climate stress becomes poverty. For governments and development institutions, this argues for moving beyond narrowly defined climate programmes toward integrated strategies linking education, health, social protection and adaptation.

The study also produces a counterintuitive result: higher health expenditure is positively associated with infant mortality. The authors are careful not to interpret this as evidence that health spending worsens child outcomes, noting that countries with greater health challenges may increase spending in response to those problems. The finding raises a broader governance question about whether additional resources are reaching frontline services efficiently enough to translate expenditure into improved outcomes.

In countries with limited fiscal space, expanding health budgets without improving service quality, targeting and delivery may generate weaker results than expected. The study reinforces the importance of health-system efficiency, safe water, sanitation and maternal and child health services as core elements of climate resilience.

The Bigger Lesson: Adaptation Must Become Social Policy

The research treats poverty as multidimensional and climate impacts as dynamic. Previous work has often examined climate, income or health separately, whereas this study brings household consumption and infant mortality into a single regional framework while distinguishing between short- and long-run relationships. That approach better reflects the reality facing vulnerable populations, where economic, health and environmental pressures often interact rather than occur independently.

The findings support a stronger case for adaptive social protection, particularly in countries exposed to high temperatures, drought and fragile household purchasing power. The authors recommend mechanisms capable of protecting vulnerable households during extreme heat and drought, alongside investment in irrigation, water management, health resilience and education. They also argue that wealthier MENA countries could help more vulnerable neighbours through financing, technology transfer and capacity building.

The evidence nevertheless requires careful interpretation. The study relies on national-level data, uses a largely linear specification and cannot fully capture rural-urban disparities, extreme-event thresholds or important transmission channels such as governance, food prices, water access and social protection. Its additional robustness analysis also shows that while the direction of temperature effects remains broadly consistent, statistical precision falls when cross-country dependence is treated more aggressively.

However, this only clarifies the study’s broader message. Climate change in MENA should not be viewed as a standalone environmental problem that can be managed with isolated adaptation projects. Its effects are increasingly intertwined with household consumption, child health, education, inflation, public spending and institutional capacity, making climate resilience inseparable from the wider development model governments choose to build.

FIRST PUBLISHED ON: Devdiscourse
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How to Assess and Address System-Level Physical Risks Wisely

How to Assess and Address System-Level Physical Risks Wisely

Aug 18, 2026

Scrabble tiles spelling out ‘risk’ scattered on a rustic wooden background, symbolizing uncertainty. by Markus Winkler via Pexels

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How to assess and address system-level physical risks

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By MARSH 08/18/2026 

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Climate risk does not stop at the boundary of a building or facility.  An organization’s resilience is inseparable from the health of the surrounding communities, ecosystems, infrastructure, and supply chains.  Yet for many businesses, climate-related risks are still assessed too narrowly, often only at the level of individual assets. A more connected approach enables clients to better identify, assess, manage, and transfer system-level physical risks. The steps below can help clients begin to take that broader view.

What are system-level risks?

System-level risks are threats to the suppliers, customers, infrastructure, resources, ecosystem services, governments, regulators, capital providers, and communities that organizations depend on but do not fully control (see Figure 1).

Whereas asset-level risk is predominantly related to potential property damage and business interruption, systems-level risk is driven primarily by the threat of business interruption, with property damage as a secondary concern.

For example, a company may harden an asset against flooding or heat. However, if during an extreme weather event, transport links fail, the power supply is disrupted, workers cannot reach the site, or critical suppliers are impacted, the business is still exposed.

System-level risks are particularly important to consider in the built environment, where organizations depend on complex networks of infrastructure, labor, energy, water, logistics, public services, and local communities. In towns and cities, a heatwave, flood, or wildfire rarely remains purely a local physical hazard.

However, until now, these risks have often been underestimated. Traditional risk assessments tend to focus on physical assets because they are easier to model and more familiar to business leaders. By contrast, system-level dependencies are more diffuse. They cut across functions and stakeholders rather than sitting within a single team or budget. That makes them harder to own, harder to quantify, and easier to overlook.

01 | The Marsh Risk Climate Adaptation Framework: organizations should consider both asset- and system-level considerations

Practical steps to address system-level risk

Addressing these risks requires a broad approach. To build true resilience, organizations need to look beyond their own boundaries and actively engage with regulators, suppliers, peer organizations, and critical infrastructure providers.

As put forward in Marsh’s report, Addressing the system-level resilience gap, organizations can achieve this by taking a four-step approach: identify system dependencies, assess materiality, manage risk more effectively, and transfer residual risk where possible. This is an iterative process that should be embedded into location strategy, procurement, capital allocation, and enterprise risk management to support more resilient decision-making across the business.

Marsh has also developed practical checklists, available in the report appendix, aligned to each system-level climate risk that organizations operating in urban and industrial areas can use. Designed to be actionable, they provide a useful tool for risk managers and other risk owners across the organization.

Additionally, tools such as Marsh’s Insurance Enabler Framework can be used to identify where resilience measures can improve risk outcomes and where pricing pressure may point to deeper vulnerabilities.

Helping clients turn complex climate risk into informed action

In our work, we regularly encounter barriers such as climate risk being communicated in technical or scientific language that does not always resonate with senior decision-makers.

Another challenge is organizational fragmentation. In many businesses, climate resilience sits in silos — perhaps within sustainability, operations, risk, or business continuity — rather than being embedded across governance, capital allocation, procurement, and strategy. As a result, organizations may understand that system-level climate risks present a threat, but they do not always have a consistent way to translate that awareness into coordinated action.

At the same time, the benefits of resilience are often long term, indirect, or difficult to express in financial terms, while the costs are immediate and visible. As a result, system-level risk can appear less urgent than it truly is. Marsh’s framework and checklists provide clients with a practical way to turn this challenge into an effective response.

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Green Wall as an Investment: Myths and Facts

Green Wall as an Investment: Myths and Facts

Aug 8, 2026

Stunning view of Dubai’s modern skyscrapers under a clear blue sky. by Joerg Hartmann via Pexels

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“Green Wall” as an Investment: Numbers vs. Marketing

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PRAGMATIKA  / Urbanism / 

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Green Wall as an Investment: Myths and Facts

Vertical gardening has become a symbol of modern and sustainable architecture. However, are “green walls” really an effective investment, or is it more of a successful marketing image? In her column for PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA, Natalia Korotka, a leading architect and general planner at the architectural and design company AIMM, analyzes common myths about vertical gardening, based on international research, real cases, and economic calculations, and explains under what conditions such solutions really work.

No visualization in a metropolis attracts as much as a facade covered with plants. Vertical gardening has become the visual language of sustainable development: it appears in every second concept of a new quarter, in every third presentation for an investor. The problem is that between the render and the real operation there is a chasm that the industry rarely shows to the client.

I am an architect-general planner, and my job is to evaluate solutions not at the moment of completion of the facility, but over the horizon of decades. From this perspective, vertical gardening is worth examining for some myths, each of which has its own digital reflection.

Myth 1: It’s cheaper than traditional landscaping

No. A systematic review of the cost-effectiveness of green walls (World Construction Symposium) shows that the life-cycle cost of a living wall can be more than ten times that of a green facade on cables or mesh, and the maintenance of a living wall is on average twelve times more expensive than simple facade greening. The classic study by Perini and Rosasco, which remains one of the basic studies on the subject, states bluntly that for some systems, the benefits—energy savings, increased property value—simply do not cover the costs of installation and maintenance over the life cycle.

A prime example is the Bosco Verticale in Milan, the most cited vertical gardening project in the world. It is not a wall, but a balcony garden of trees and shrubs, and it requires a team of professional climbers-gardeners who descend the facade on ropes to prune and inspect the plants.

Green Wall as an Investment: Myths and Facts

Bosco Verticale is a residential complex consisting of two towers, 110 and 76 meters high. The two skyscrapers were built in the Porta Nuova district of Milan between 2009 and 2014. The authors of the project are Italian architects Stefano Boeri, Gianandrea Barreca and Giovanni La Varra.

It is estimated that residents pay an additional seven euros per square meter of housing each year just for the care of the plants – this is a separate item of home maintenance, comparable to full-fledged cleaning or security.

Myth 2: Plant it once, and it grows on its own

Living systems require continuous management of irrigation, nutrition, and drainage. Bosco Verticale uses about 3,5–5,7 thousand cubic meters of water per year for irrigation, and this is in a project with centralized humidity sensors and automated irrigation — that is, in a system designed as competently as possible.

A counterexample is the Qiyi City Forest Garden complex in Chengdu. Eight towers with balcony gardens were to become a “vertical forest” for 826 apartments. The developer planted the plants in advance, but did not lay down a system for constant care and drainage.

Green Wall as an Investment: Myths and Facts

Qiyi City Forest Garden in Chengdu

When the apartments were not immediately occupied, the plants on the abandoned balconies grew out of control, water stagnated in the pots, and the building became a mosquito breeding ground, which is why most of the owners at that time refused to move in at all. This is not a story about a “bad idea” – it is a story about landscaping designed without answering the question “who will take care of it in five years and how?”

In European cases, we see the same pattern: companies that install green walls admit that the cause of degradation of living facades is almost always not the climate or plants, but management. Maintenance contracts cost an average of about 10% of the cost of the wall itself each year, and this is where customers often try to save first.

Myth 3: It significantly cools the city

The effect is there, but it is greatly exaggerated compared to how it is presented in marketing materials. A study in temperate European climates showed that green walls reduce air temperature by at most 1–1,2°C. This is significantly different from the indicators in tropical or subtropical climates, where, due to higher humidity and more intense transpiration, cooling reaches 2–5°C, and in some modular systems with a substrate – even 10–14°C.

In other words: a technology that works great in Singapore or Barcelona gives many times weaker results in the climate of Kyiv or Lviv. This is not a reason to abandon landscaping altogether – it is a reason not to rely on vertical systems as a tool to combat the urban heat island where ordinary trees and shading are more climatically effective.

Myth 4: Plants thrive equally in different zones

Even in the mild climate of Madrid, the creator of the most famous “green wall” in Europe – the CaixaForum facade – selected almost 300 species of plants specifically for contrasting seasons: hot summer and cold winter. This is a design at the level of botanical research, not decorative landscaping. In a climate with sharp temperature drops, spring frosts after thaws and unstable humidity – which is exactly the characteristic of the climate of most of Ukraine – the selection of species and the system of root zone protection become a determining factor in the survival of the system.

What does this mean for projects in Ukraine?

Vertical gardening is not a universal solution, but a highly specialized tool with high operational requirements. It is justified where there is a customer who is ready to finance professional care for years in advance, a climate zone that does not destroy the system with frost and humidity drops, or a careful selection of plants adapted to this zone, and a realistic understanding of the effect of such gardening.

Photo: Daniel Funes Fuentes/Unsplash

In our projects at AIMM, we treat vertical gardening as an engineering system with an operating budget, not as a final touch to the presentation. If the customer is not ready to lay the cost of maintenance for decades to come, it is more honest to talk about traditional gardening right away – it is less spectacular on the render, but it really lives longer than until the first winter without watering.

Sustainability is not measured by how impressive a solution looks on opening day, but by whether it continues to work five years later without extraordinary effort. By this criterion, most vertical gardens fail the test long before the first plants appear, so every solution must be balanced and harmonious.

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