Reflecting on a greener future - URBAN GreenUP holds its periodic meeting in Izmir to study the project’s different facets and forthcoming actions

URBAN GreenUP consortium partners gathered together from the 16th to the 18th of January 2018 in Izmir for its 2nd Periodic Meeting, an occasion to share knowledge and progress on the implementation of urban renaturing plans in the front-runner cities and open the way to the replication process in the follower cities

Six months have passed since we launched Urban GreenUP,a European Horizon 2020 project focused on tailoring “Re-Naturing Urban Plans” for cities to relish. During the three day meeting the partners had the possibility to share their experiences and progress in a series of comprehensive and highly-interactive sessions covering the front-runner cities, Valladolid (Spain), Liverpool (UK) and Izmir (Turkey) and exchange views on other key topics for replication, such as the non-technical barriers to the implementation of Re-Naturing Urban plans from a social, political, urban, organizational and financial point of view.

So far, Valladolid has focussed on the technical design of the NBS in the identified demo-site areas and intensively worked on the project communication at both local and national level. Liverpool is currently working on identifying the most appropriate locations to implement the proposed NBS and how to best monitor their impacts within the budget and resources of the project. Last but not least, Izmir has been working on the technical designs of the NBS to be implemented in the demo sites and on setting up its Green Infrastructure Strategy, that was officially presented by the Municipality during the special event of January 18, right after the second periodic meeting.

A study tour of the Izmir demo sites gave URBAN GreenUP team the possibility to have a glimpse of what was yet to come in the coming months when nature-based solutions will be introduced slowly into these areas thus changing the sites’ overall scenery. These changes are expected to provide  sizeable social, economic and environmental impacts in Izmir, which is doomed to be severely impacted by climate chances as professor Serif Hepcan from the Ege University said. Izmir will thus act as an ambassador not only for the follower cities involved in URBAN GreenUP - Ludwigsburg (Germany), Mantova (Italy), Medellin (Colombia), QuyNhon (Vietnam) and Chengdu (China) – but for other Turskich and international cities.

The second Periodic meeting turned out to be a great chance for everyone to learn, to share their experiences and to brainstorm new ways on how to better tackle the upcoming challenges. After this experience in Izmir one thing is clear: Urban GreenUP will definitely be able to provide a greener future for urbanized cities partaking in the project.