Project name: «Smart Urban Green: Governing Conflicting Perspectives on Transformations in the Urban Rural Continuum» (Smart-U-Green)

Project site: https://www.smartugreen.eu/

Project duration: 01.01.2017 – 31.01.2021

Project financing: JPI ENSUF Programme

Project description:

Urban landscapes witness major transformations that affect urban landscape quality as well as the quality of life. Some transformations are desirable, such as a transition to urban sustainability, some are inevitable, because of major changes in economy or culture. Transformations in urban landscapes come with intractable controversies, uncertainties and complexities, involving multiple actors, interests and rapidly changing advocacy coalitions. But they also stimulate the bottom-up emergence of alternative ideas, practices and networks that confront urban planning regimes with the challenge to adopt more organic, collaborative and transformative forms of governance.

In line with the European Landscape Convention, Smart-U-Green aims at the co-creation of knowledge on new options for governance taking into account conflicting perspectives on urban landscape quality and the need to synthesize expert and lay knowledge. Smart-U-Green will focus on the greening of urban landscapes, in three urban regions in the Netherlands, Italy and France, to,

1. analyze conflicting perspectives on urban landscape quality,
2. analyze and evaluate local policy-making using sustainability indicators of urban landscape quality, and
3. develop and explore innovative options for governance to be operationalised in experimental area-development strategies.

Complementary case studies will be done in urban regions in Croatia, Belarus and the Russian Federation.

Project poster is here.