Sites

The sites are connected to the following themes

And the following scales

  • S: Proximity scale
  • L: Urban or rural milieu scale
  • XL: Territorial scale

Each site has two scales: the Reflection site and the Project Site Their interconnection gives the specific inter-scale relationship.

Actual registrations per site

Europan Sites Map. Zoom on the map to discover the sites and click on the site of your choice to discover it.

The “multiple heritage” of derelict buildings provides a precious source for a larger urban transformation, which is launched by interventions that operate first in the scale of the site itself, Integrating social and cultural traces in the sites’ geographical and physical rehabilitation enables an upscaling of the transformation’s impact. It can induce a second life whose urban energy radiates far beyond its physical limits.

How to transform urban areas and enclaves into open neighbourhoods? How to constitute the smallest urban entity of proximity, exchange and governance, consisting of humans and more than humans? Open urban neighbourhoods can be enablers of citizenship and accommodators of diverse temporalities of stay. They may be pivotal sites for initiating and implementing social and ecological changes, rippling through the rest of the city, thus being valuable for the European Green Transition.

A missing layer of urbanity is added on a territory with underlying complexities. In all these large sites, the question is how inhabit them, how to relate to them, how to add a human ecosystem while negotiating the pros and cons of the existing complexity. It may be to reconsider an urban interrupted development, to care wounds left or created by old or new infrastructures; to regenerate sub-standard housing or the damage left behind a brownfield, to reconsider a river or former agricultural fields.

In context of global warming, to live and to re-dynamize inhabited milieus thanks to water is a strong driver for re-sourcing ; crossing the challenge to adapt to risks (flooding, marine submersion, coastline withdrawal, drought…) and to restore ecological milieus to improve quality of life, health and joy of every day.

In this family of sites, the potential of soils could guide the evolution of a site in a process of space’s regeneration, intensification or addition.  The biological dimension of available land could trigger new ecological and social relations, and interactions between organisms for a mutual benefit. From the horizon to the scale of the microorganism: which is the capacity of soils to infiltrate biodiversity provide ecosystem services and give continuity to the territory?

How to design processes and projects for the revaluation of landscapes that focus on the interdependencies and eco-dependencies of resources (natural, cultural, productive) and the territory? The regeneration of landscapes can become a mediation tool between residential areas, facilities, and obsolete infrastructures and territories undergoing transformation (even at risk) as a result of the effects of climate change. Is an invitation to think at the resources of the area in a regenerative way to support a healthier environment for humans and non-humans?

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*Europan is an European network of architectural, urban planning and landscape ideas competitions for young designers who take care of inhabited milieus, and followed by implementation processes