URBAN_GreenUP

Over the course of the past decades, many severe environmental problems have arisen due to sprawling urbanisation and climate change. Poor air quality, floods, drought, heat waves and heat island effect are just some examples. As a consequence, health and societal emergencies have emerged, calling for new radical actions on a global scale. One of these actions is URBAN GreenUP, an EU-funded project aiming to make our cities more sustainable and resilient to climate change by means of the very essence of our own environment: nature.

URBAN GreenUP’s approach is based on the revolutionary concept of Renaturing Urban Planning (RUP). The goal is to develop a methodology integrating city planning and nature. This will be achieved through the design and implementation of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) in urban areas.

URBAN GreenUP aims at obtaining a tailored methodology (1) to support the co-development of Renaturing Urban Plans focused on climate change mitigation and adaptation and efficient water management, and (2) to assist in the implementation of NBS in an effective way. NBS classification and parametrization will be addressed and some resources to support decision making will be established as part of the project activities.

Through the implementation of very technical nature-based solutions in large-scale districts, URBAN GreenUP aims at achieving a variety of impacts related with both environmental and socio-economic aspects.

The nature-based solutions that will be implemented during the project cover a variety of complementary yet interconnected aspects of urban life and infrastructures. They are grouped into four main categories: re-naturing urbanization, water interventions, singular green infrastructures and non-technical interventions.

Three front-runner cities - Valladolid (Spain), Liverpool (UK) and Izmir (Turkey) – will validate and demonstrate the effectiveness of the URBAN GreenUP methodology. Based on their experience, five follower cities, Mantova (Italy), Ludwigsburg (Germany) Medellin (Colombia), Chengdu (China) and Binh Dinh-Quy Nhon (Vietnam), will set up their own Renaturing Urban Plans to replicate the URBAN GreenUP strategy and its green economy approach.

Apart from urban green transformation, the project is expected to achieve important results in other fields too. URBAN GreenUP will improve life quality and well-being in urban areas, raise awareness on the importance of environment preservation among citizens, generate new market opportunities for European companies at international level, foster the creation of transnational networks and synergies. Last but not the least, it will highlight the importance of the local communities’ active participation when addressing climate problems through co-creation activities also directly involving the citizens, who are at the core of their cities’ green regeneration.