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09/17/2013 14:36

Municipalities towards Circular Flow Land Use Management!

Sybille Wenke-Thiem Stabsstelle Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
Deutsches Institut für Urbanistik

    New land management approach - Circular Flow Land Use Management - implemented in six countries in Central Europe. A newly published compendium collects the practice oriented project results of the EU-project CircUse

    Berlin. Cities within Europe are developing unsustainable urban structures. This is mirrored in the fact that land consumption is continuous rising all over Europe. More land consumption weakens the ability to deal with pressing trends like climate change, demographic change, peak soil, peak oil, rising costs for infrastructure, among others. To ignore the negative consequences of land consumption will result in an increased vulnerability of municipalities.

    The project „Circular Flow Land Use Management (CircUse)” – active from March 2010 until August 2013 - based on a new land use philosophy which can be expressed by the slogan “avoid – recycle – compensate”. To support this philosophy, new instrumental approaches for the optimisation of land use management and for the minimisation of land sealing were developed on local level in six pilot regions. Involved in the project were partners from Poland, Czech Republic, Italy, Slovakia, Austria and Germany. A final CircUse conference entitled "Sustainable Urban Land Use" was held in Katowice (Poland) in May 2013. Procedures, instruments, organisational solutions and other project results were presented and discussed with 120 participants from all over Europe.

    A newly published compendium with the title “Towards Circular Flow Land Use Management“ – edited by the German Institute of Urban Affairs (Difu) – summarizes the main outputs, findings and recommendations of the project. It includes the principle of circular flow land use management”, presents pilot projects in six different partner countries and bundles valuable findings in fields of activities like information, planning, cooperation, financing, awareness raising or participation.

    Six local action plans – published in the compendium – are describing activities towards sustainable land management in the partner regions. One important result of the local activities is the establishment of the first land management agency in Austria in the region of Voitsberg. The agency manages the revitalisation of abandoned industrial properties on a regional level. Furthermore pilot activities on a site of a former porcelain company in Freiberg (Saxony/Germany) or the regreening of a former mining area in Piekary Śląskie close to Katowice (Poland) are presented. The Micro-Region Trnava (Czech Republic) has developed an action plan which focuses on agreements with the neighbour municipalities. The City of Asti (Italy) focuses on mapping and the revitalisation of the “Way-Assauto” area, which is a former car supplier estate. The Region of Usti nad Labem has created a study on the revitalisation of the peninsula “Krasne Brezno”.

    The printed version of the compendium also includes product CD ROM with a data management tool for municipalities produced by the Saxon State Office for the Environment, Agriculture and Geology. The tool offers municipal actors a platform to collect information about brownfields, gaps and underused land in the settlement area. The tool includes field work sheets, maps and technical instructions. The data management tool is available in six languages.

    However, attention was taken on awareness raising activities to foster the idea of CircUse. Therefore the compendium shows concepts to a trainings course which was developed by Difu for local and regional key actors, like municipalities. To catch also the future decision makers, a trainings course for pupils was developed by the Austrian Environmental Agency. This school course – available in six languages – covers issues like soil functions and land management and has been already applied in six countries.

    All outputs of the CircUse project are presented in the compendium. Please find the CircUse compendium for download under www.circuse.eu.
    The project is implemented through the CENTRAL EUROPE Programme co-financed by the ERDF. The programme is funded by the Central European Program of European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation.

    More Information:
    CircUse Website

    www.circuse.eu

    This text is of course free for publishing and we would be very pleased to receive a copy or link of the material!

    Contact:
    German Institute for Urban Affairs, Zimmerstraße 13-15, 10969 Berlin, Germany
    Maic Verbücheln and Thomas Preuss
    phone: +49 30 39001-265, +49 30 39001-263
    e-mail: verbuecheln@difu.de; preuss@difu.de


    More information:

    http://www.circuse.eu


    Images

    Re-use of a former industrial site in Nantes
    Re-use of a former industrial site in Nantes
    Maic Verbücheln
    None

    Circuse-Logo
    Circuse-Logo

    None


    Criteria of this press release:
    Journalists, all interested persons
    Construction / architecture, Economics / business administration, Environment / ecology, Politics, Teaching / education
    transregional, national
    Scientific Publications, Transfer of Science or Research
    English


     

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