ProGIreg is a project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme. ProGIreg stands for ‘productive Green Infrastructure for post-industrial urban regeneration’ and its goal is to achieve urban regeneration through nature in post-industrial aras of Europe and China.
Four front-runner cities (Dortmund (DE); Turin (IT); Zagreb (HR); Ningbo (CN)) will create Living Labs in urban areas. Going beyond the current state-of-the-art with Green Infrastructure as a one-off state intervention, the proGIreg Living Labs will develop NBS which are citizen owned and codeveloped by state, market and civil society stakeholders. Innovation will take place on the technical level through the NBS deployments, on the social level through co-designing, co-creating and co-implementing NBS with local communities and on the economic level through combining NBS with market-ready business models. Five follower cities in Eastern and Southern Europe (Cascais PT, Cluj-Napoca RO, Piraeus GR, Sofia BG, Zenica BA) will be co-steering the research process to assure replicability and adaptability to their local context resulting in urban plans for NBS deployment.
Eight different NBSs are designed in ProGIreg to create green infrastructures not only to improve the quality of life and reduce the vulnerability of cities to climate changes, but also to provide tangible and measurable economic advantages for citizens and enterprises in urban districts post-industrial.
In Turin, specifically in the Mirafiori district (South Turin), the NBS to be tested include:
- regenerating industrial soils biotic compounds,
- creating community-based urban agriculture and aquaponics,
- making renatured river corridors accessible for local residents,
- realisation of green walls and roofs,
- implementation of local environmental compensation processes,
- creating, monitoring and promoting awareness of spaces in favor of pollinators and their reproduction.
Scientific assessment and monitoring results from the Living Labs will be made available on the EU NBS platforms OPPLA and THINKNATURE and will contribute to the European reference framework for NBS.
Our role
ENVIPARK plays a key role in the implementation of the Living Lab in Turin, integrating existing activities as the adaptation of Torino City Lab. In doing so, Envipark is actively involved in the process of tackling technical and administrative barriers to upscaling nature-based solutions (NBS) at the city level. Finally, Envipark also contributes to the development and promotion of the project by organising training events and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) training modules.
Click here to find out where Turin’s NBSs are located
For further information, visit the project’s website and subscribe to ProGIreg Newsletter