"If an administration would like to be successful, it needs to work with civil society; the people who live in a quarter are the experts of that quarter". With these words of wisdom, Lord Mayor of Dortmund (Germany) Ullrich Sierau welcomed participants to a conference on nature-based solutions and urban regeneration, which took place recently in his city, 26-26 September.

The conference, which sought to introduce and explore how nature-based solutions can be used to regenerate urban areas, was organised as part of and acted as the kick-off conference for the proGIreg project.

The proGIreg project, which is led by the RWTH Aachen University, aims to build collaboration between cities across Europe and in China, which are developing nature-based solutions together with local citizens, civil society, research institutions, local governments and the private sector, to improve the long-term health and well-being of people living in post-industrial areas.
The conference programme was made up of plenary presentations and panel discussions on nature-based solutions, their replication, scaling-up and business models and included presentations from the cities of Dortmund, Turin (Italy), Zagreb (Croatia), Zenica (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Cascais (Portigal), Piraeus (Greece) and Cluj-Napoca (Romania), who presented their Living Labs, the post-industrials areas of their cities, which are being regenerated through nature-based solutions, in a dynamic market place format.

Field visits to the local industrial heritage site, the Hansa coking plant, and to the PHOENIX See, Dortmund’s famous industrial site-turned community lake, gave participants inspiration for their own up-coming urban regeneration plans.

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