The Institute Update

📰 Welcome to our second annual update, and our first since our name change in April 2025! We have already had a very active first half of the year, and we are even more excited about what lies ahead. Some research projects have come to a successful end, and new projects have just started, such as the ESPON GILL project (see below!). 🚀 We are also thrilled to have launched our new iUE webinars with a first session on soil in planning! In terms of governance and strategic positioning, the Institute for Urban Excellence will soon be announcing exciting news, together with a new Board of Directors and a brand new strategy. 📌 Stay tuned!

We are beyond excited to support the Greening Cities Partnership of the Urban Agenda for the EU through the ESPON GILL project! 🌿 Together with TECNALIA Research & Innovation and the European Forest Institute, we are working on a methodology to quanitify the demand for green infrastructure at city scale. Our team is working with two case studies: Imola in Italy and Sopot in Poland. Ultimately, this methodology will be available to any city to support them in the development of urban nature plans. 🔗 Discover more on our website!

🌳 Urban nature is also at the heart of our work in the JUSTNature Project, where we direct our efforts toward a just transition to low-carbon cities through Nature-based Solutions. As part of JUSTNature, our team recently organised a successful city-to-city exchange workshop together with Prospex Institute vzw. 🤝🏽 The event was moderated by our project manager Tannya Pico, and brought together city representatives, urban practitioners, and sustainability experts from across Europe in a collaborative effort to share experiences about the adoption of NbS.

Another engaging workshop was held by our project officer Rebecca Baugh in the context of the DUST - Democratising jUst Sustainability Transitions project. ✏️ Together with the project coordinator, Rebecca co-facilitated a workshop on affective communication and community engagement in urban and regional planning for over 100 Master's students at Delft University of Technology.

💡 In turn, iUE’s project manager Taliah Dommerholt organised two workshops in the context of the PLUS Change Project. During the project’s General Assembly in Riga, Latvia, she led a collaborative session focused on the dissemination and exploitation of the project's key results, together with iUE's project officer Alice Jelmini. The session encouraged discussions on how to maximize the visibility and long-term value of these results across relevant stakeholder groups. 🎯 Taliah concurrently participated in the organization of PLUS Change’s Capacity Building Workshop, a training for professionals on the integration of justice into land use planning.

We couldn’t be happier to announce the launch of our new series of webinars, bringing the expertise of both our team and network of partners to a broader audience. 🌐 Last week, we kicked-off this series with the webinar Soil Functions and related Ecosystem Services for Sustainable Cities, held in collaboration with SPADES4Soils. The online training was moderated by Tannya Pico and counted with international experts from both Latin America and Europe, including our executive project manager Yoann Clouet. It featured insights of soil considerations in planning around the world, and an interactive session with a collaborative mapping activity. 🌱 More webinars will follow, stay tuned!

📍 Only last week, we attended the European Urban Resilience Forum, where we presented our methodology Storytelling for Participatory Exchange. Led by iUE’s project manager Samir Amin, our team engaged with a range of participants: from municipalities and city representatives who showed strong interest in applying the tool in their contexts, to practitioners eager to learn more about its development process. 💻 The conference was inspiring, and after two days of rich discussions on promoting resilience in European regions and cities, we’re feeling energised and motivated!

Earlier in June, as part of the EU Green Week 2025, our team organised VARCITIES - Green Cities are Healthier Cities final event in Brussels, approaching the project’s end in August. 🍃 After five years of collaborative work, almost 30 solutions for greener and healthier cities were designed in seven locations across Europe. During the event, we presented our recommendations to shape a greener, healthier future, and released VARCITIES’ replication tool.

♻️ Interested in a green future for cities? Then you can't miss UP2030 HE's final event Cities in Action: Shaping Just, Resilient and Climate Neutral Planning. Join us on November 3rd in Barcelona! ☀️ Register here.

📣 Calling for a spatially-conscious EU Agenda for Cities: together with professionals and organisations from our network, we have published a position paper calling for a spatially-conscious and mission-oriented EU Agenda for Cities. 📄 Despite urban planners’ vital role in turning EU ambitions into local, place-based action, planning professionals remain largely excluded from decision- and policy-making at the European level. Our paper, submitted as part of the European Commission’s public consultation, outlines how the future EU Agenda for Cities can better reflect the territorial realities of Europe’s cities and towns. “We need an EU urban policy that moves from fragmented funding to strategic, place-based interventions supported by planners who understand the spatial implications of EU objectives,” ➡️ Read our contribution and access the full position paper!

📣 Are you interested in receiving direct opportunities from us? 🔗 Become part of our Community of Practice! We are always open to developing new partnerships and collaborations, reach out to us if you are interested to work together on capacity building, research exploration, public outreach and technical assistance both in and outside of Europe. Send us an email: info@institute-urbanex.org or connect on social media!

Thank you for reading! Until the next Update 🧡