The current state of knowledge in landscape architecture of urban green spaces in Slovakia significantly falls behind advancements in urban planning and architecture. This gap underscores the growing need for well-planned, designed, and integrated green spaces in creating sustainable and livable urban environments. Urban green spaces serve as an essential component of residential areas. They provide important ecosystem services and significant environmental benefits, such as reducing the urban heat island effect, enhancing air quality, promoting biodiversity, and managing stormwater. These natural processes are vital in mitigating the impacts of climate change and improving the resilience of urban areas. Through a review of the green space and housing estate relationship, this article emphasizes the need for integrated green spaces strategies in the planning and designing of housing estates. By analyzing the mutual relationship between green spaces and housing estates, the article highlights how green spaces enhance the physical environment and play a crucial role in the social and economic attributes of residential areas and the well-being of urban residents.

Urban green spaces of collective housing are more than a passive background: they are living records of how cities have understood the relationship between housing, nature, and society. In many parts of Central and Eastern Europe, particularly within housing estates built in the late 20th century, these green spaces were carefully planned as part of a larger ideological, spatial, and social framework. Today, however, their original functions are often obscured by decades of political change, privatization or shifting management practices. This paper explores six residential areas in Nitra, Slovakia, analyzing how their design, amenities, and open spaces reflect wider societal transformations. Special attention is given to urban green spaces and urban voids—often overlooked yet critical elements of the everyday urban experience. Using a multicriteria method, we evaluate and compare these developments considering both historical and contemporary urban challenges, including climate resilience and sustainable regeneration. Our approach combines archival research with on-site fieldwork, spatial mapping, and qualitative observation to explore how the planning of collective housing has changed and what it means for the future of urban living. The results reveal a gradual decline in the quality and function of open space in collective housing, especially in newer projects where ecological and social values are often neglected.

Urban emptiness is a recurring spatial condition across contemporary cities, resulting from long-term planning decisions, functional transformations, and shifting socio-economic dynamics. Urban voids are often interpreted as signs of failure or neglect; however, they also represent flexible and open-ended spaces embedded within everyday urban environments. This study develops and tests the Adaptive Void Assessment Framework (AVAF), a five-dimensional typological instrument applied to n = 33 urban voids identified through a systematic grid-based field survey (100 × 100 m resolution) in the central urban zone of Nitra, Slovakia (March 2025–January 2026). The framework evaluates sites across nine indicators spanning openness, social appropriation, ecological succession, temporal persistence, and institutional flexibility, yielding composite Adaptivity Index scores and four dominant adaptive regimes. The findings demonstrate that 34% of identified voids function in a socially active regime while 14% exhibit ecological dominance, with a moderate positive correlation identified between temporal persistence and adaptive capacity (r = 0.46, p < 0.05). This challenges conventional deficit-based classifications and reframes urban voids as active components of the urban metabolism capable of enhancing ecological connectivity and spatial flexibility within post-industrial urban landscapes. This reframes urban voids from residual outcomes of urbanization to spaces with potential for green integration within sustainable contemporary cities.

Vegetation elements on buildings such as green roofs are increasingly recognized as nature-based solutions to address urban environmental challenges. Green roofs can be adapted to diverse climates and building types. Their implementation in Slovakia has been rising, yet it remains limited in scale and technological ambition. Projects funded from public resources often remain conventional, with rare ambition to implement novel stormwater management systems and solutions that enhance biodiversity. Currently, the majority of investments in green roofs are limited to the private sector, while public institutions lag behind. Thus, public buildings with novel green systems and elements can still be considered non-conventional, innovative, and influential. This study investigates the development of green roofs on public buildings in the city of Nitra, Slovakia, from the first installation in 1992 to recent projects in the 2020s. By systematically mapping all existing public green roofs and conducting qualitative narrative interviews with key stakeholders, this research aims to identify the main motivations, actors, and barriers behind the implementation of green roofs in public investments. The novelty of this research lies in its mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative analyses to draw conclusions from a comprehensive dataset. By capturing all existing examples within their spatial and temporal context, rather than relying on a random subsample of case studies, this study provides a highly representative evaluation of green roof adoption. Preliminary findings provide insights into the temporal and spatial diffusion patterns of green roofs in a medium-sized Central European city and highlight the main drivers of public decision-making. The results contribute to a better understanding of how urban sustainability initiatives emerge in public sector contexts and aim to inform policy and planning to initiate and boost more green roof implementation.