Project Goals

It aimed to build a global network for sharing knowledge on eco-innovation, green economy strategies, and sustainable development, with a European focus but worldwide reach. The project harmonized concepts, mapped actors and policies, and promoted best practices for technology adoption without harming economic competitiveness.

Key Outputs

Core results included the launch of the inno4sd online platform in November 2018 (demo at new.inno4sd.net) for collaboration across sectors like research, business, and policy. It organized events, created a knowledge repository, and launched a global initiative at the European Parliament in 2018.​

Timeline and Funding

Running from around 2015, it received H2020 grant No. 641974 and emphasized inter- and transdisciplinary networking to accelerate green transitions. Work packages covered networking, concept harmonization, policy agendas, and knowledge transfer.

Project Goals

Funded by the EU’s FP7 program with €3.2 million, it extracted silica, lignin, and cellulose from wheat straw via integrated biorefinery processes, plus microfibrillated cellulose from paper pulp. These became biodegradable matrices and reinforcements mimicking wood’s properties without compromising strength.

Key Achievements

Innovations included novel silica extraction at industrial scale and low-energy biocomposites exceeding 95% bio-based content for panels and building elements. Coordinated by Tecnalia (Spain) with partners like VTT (Finland) and EMPA (Switzerland), it targeted green construction markets while cutting resource use and emissions.

Project Overview

I-PAN, or Innovative Poplar Low Density Structural Panel, was an EU-funded FP7 initiative (completed around 2016) aimed at creating sustainable, low-density wood panels (450-500 kg/m³) for applications like construction and furniture. It combined 50% recycled wood (from poplar tops) with 50% fast-growing poplar from 7-8 year cycles, reducing forest pressure and waste.

Key Innovations

A novel process, derived from OSB technology, produced “light strand board” (LSB) with modified low-energy resins that cut VOC emissions, drying/pressing costs, and energy use. Panels matched lightweight structural needs while boosting EU competitiveness in eco-friendly materials.

Applications and Impact

LSB panels suit doors, furniture, kitchens, and even yachting/shipbuilding for their strength-to-weight ratio. The project emphasized a “virtuous circle” of sustainability through material efficiency and minimal pollutants.

The Vision of Paul Stamets: According to world-renowned expert Paul Stamets (Fungi Perfecti), mushroom cultivation is a “significant tool for restoring, replenishing, and remedying Earth’s overburdened ecosphere.” Mycelium—the fibrous root structure of fungi—is viewed not just as a material, but as a healing agent for ecosystems, addressing resource depletion and toxic environmental release.

Key Case Studies in Mycelium Architecture

• The Circular Garden (Milan Design Week 2019): Designed by Carlo Ratti Associati, this installation featured arches grown from mycelium bars totaling 1km in length. As a temporary, compostable structure, it returned to the soil at the end of the event, drastically reducing the typical waste generated by architectural exhibitions.
• Hy-Fi Tower (MoMA PS1, 2014): Architect David Benjamin (The Living) created a grand tower made of bio-bricks produced by Ecovative.
  • Composition: A mix of mycelium, corn stalks, and hemp.
  • Process: Cast in rectangular molds and grown for 5 days until the filaments bound the organic waste into a solid brick.
  • Lifecycle: The structure was 100% biodegradable, with carbon emissions and energy consumption during production tending toward zero.

The GREEN SURGE project aimed to identify, develop, and test ways of linking urban green spaces, biodiversity, people, and the green economy to tackle major urban challenges like land-use conflicts, climate change adaptation, demographic changes, and public health.

It provided an evidence base for Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) planning and implementation, focusing on better linking environmental, social, and economic ecosystem services (ESS) with local communities.

🎯 Main Project Objectives & Achievements

The project addressed three interlinked objectives through an innovative, three-tiered, transdisciplinary approach.

1. Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) Planning and ESS

• Multifunctional UGI: Identified key elements of multifunctional UGI (e.g., parks, woodlands, green roofs, “blue” elements, community gardens) and provided evidence on the diverse ESS and benefits they generate.
• Supply and Demand: Assessed the balances and imbalances between supply and demand of ESS in different cities and urban areas across Europe.
• Good Practice: Assessed the implementation of UGI planning in practice to identify and transfer strategic approaches.

2. Biocultural Diversity (BCD) and Governance

• Conceptual Framework: Developed a conceptual framework of BCD for the urban context, which is an innovative approach to UGI planning and governance.
• Socio-Ecological Integration: Examined how residents with different cultural backgrounds and socio-economic situations value, use, and help maintain urban green spaces, supported by a field survey of ~3,800 people in the Urban Learning Labs.
• Innovative Governance: Focused on developing governance arrangements that integrate participatory (bottom-up) approaches with planning (top-down) approaches to facilitate local engagement.

3. Valuation and Green Economy Integration

• Integrated Valuation: Developed a multi-criteria evaluation framework—a “do-it-yourself” guideline—to assess and integrate monetary and non-monetary values of ESS and biodiversity.
• Market Integration: Identified mechanisms for unlocking cash flows from urban green spaces and evaluated existing instruments, with a focus on integrating ESS into real economies.
• Innovative Methods: Applied innovative methods like hedonic pricing models to analyze relationships between property prices and different qualitative aspects of green spaces.

🛠️ Methodology (Three-Tiered Approach)

The project utilized a comprehensive three-tiered approach and Learning Alliances (LAs) for shared learning and stakeholder involvement in situations of high complexity.

📚 Dissemination and Legacy

• Handbook: Produced the “Urban green infrastructure: connecting people and nature for sustainable cities” Handbook (D1.3), a collection of policy briefs, factsheets, and guidelines for planners, policy-makers, and practitioners.
• Dissemination: The project provided recommendations for policy makers, UGI planners, citizens, NGOs, and business actors to promote the creation and management of high-quality green spaces.

Reporting period: 2021-06-01 to 2023-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

In proGIreg, four front-runner cities (FRC) (Dortmund DE; Turin IT; Zagreb HR; Ningbo CN) have created Living Labs (LLs). These areas suffer from social and economic disadvantages, inequality and other problems related to the decline of industries. They lack quality greenspaces, have a negative impact on human health and wellbeing and are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The LLs have implemented Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) which are citizen-owned and co-developed by state, market and civil society stakeholders. Innovation took place on the technical level through the NBS deployments, on the social level through co-designing, co-creating and co-implementing NBS and on the economic level through developing new NBS business models (BMs). Four follower cities (Cascais PT, Cluj-Napoca RO, Piraeus GR, Zenica BA) have tested the replicability of the NBS in new contexts. Each Follower City (FC) has organised a co-design process which has led to urban plans for NBS. The NBS that are tested i.a. include: regenerating soils with biotic compounds, creating community-based urban agriculture and aquaponics and making green corridors accessible. Scientific benefit assessment and monitoring results have been made available via numerous channels, including the EU NBS platform OPPLA, and contribute to the European reference framework for NBS, e.g. through the NBS monitoring guidelines and an interactive Business Model Catalogue (iBMC). Global impact has been achieved by the MOOC “Nature-based urban regeneration” distributed via edX and attended by learners from more than 100 countries. Internal and external replication events have been organized in all FRC to create and extend a community of practice in NBS.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The first RP has laid the foundation for a successful project implementation. All work packages (WPs) have established the methodologies for fulfilling their tasks and objectives throughout the project duration.
Co-design processes in FRCs: Based on the quad helix model, local partnerships including government, universities, citizen organisations and SMEs have been established and developed LL vision maps representing the planned transformation.
Assessment methodology for NBS benefits: Ten assessment tools have been defined to measure the impact within the four assessment domains: socio-cultural inclusiveness, human health and wellbeing, ecological and environmental restoration and economic and labour market benefits. Data for a baseline assessment on the level of the FRC, the LL and the NBS intervention sites have been collected.
The second RP has been fully under the impact of the CoViD-19 pandemic. It was mainly devoted to starting the implementation of NBS in the LLs leading to the identification of technical and non-technical barriers which were collected and assessed. Several NBS have been adapted to the local conditions and unforeseen risks. This co-creative process has also led to improvements, e.g. through the introduction of a therapeutic garden. The elaboration of urban plans for NBS replication in FCs started by establishing a roadmap for the co-design processes.
The third RP has included the possibility to come back from CoVid-related restrictions to a normal working situation. The period allowed to overcome the barriers and delays in NBS implementation: all NBS have been implemented by project end are documented on fact sheets, in short brochures and on the OPPLA platform.
The results of NBS benefit assessment have been published in extensive reports on the LL level and on the NBS level and also been wrapped-up in a short report with success stories and take-home messages.
NBS implementation and management also allowed to collect data on the business and governance models of the co-created NBS. A new NBS business model canvas has been created to better depict the societal and environmental benefits provided. Results of the analysis of BMs found in proGIreg with the help of the Pestoff-triangle show that different options for creating and managing NBS between the state, the market and the civil society exist and that the third sector, bringing together different types of stakeholders from the three domains, can play a decisive role in creating more NBS in cities.
The learnings from NBS implementation in FRCs and their BMs allowed the replication of NBS in FCs in local co-design processes. The most suitable among the eight proGIreg NBS have been selected and adapted to the FC’s local urban context and stakeholder settings.
A number of supporting tasks guaranteed project impact on research and practise. All FRCs hosted replication events for the NBS community of practise and the final conference in Zagreb was the occasion to present the project results to a wide audience. The proGIreg MOOC is available on edX and reaches a global learner community.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The co-design experience in the proGIreg FRCs has been translated into co-design guidelines and a roadmap for NBS co-creation. These allow to anchor investments of European funds into NBS within local communities. ProGIreg has led to a large number of mainstreaming and spin-off projects for NBS, as well on the local as on the international level (EU funding schemes INTERREG, DUT, NetZeroCities, NEB). Project knowledge is also shared in national NBS hubs and in an international RIA with Africa.
ProGIreg has provided major contributions to the guidelines “Evaluating the impact of Nature-based Solutions: a handbook for practitioners” and created own guidelines for upscaling NBS monitoring.
Impact has been created in the following fields:
1) A community of practice in NBS has been forged between the proGIreg cities and beyond the consortium through replication events. The community can rely on scientific evidence from proGIreg concerning NBS benefits and the iBMC.
2) citizen ownership: A new understanding of Green Infrastructure (GI) as an urban common resource has been at the core of proGIreg. The transdisciplinary LLs and the new participatory processes give guidance how actors from state, market and civil society can join forces for NBS. BMs for citizen governance of NBS have been developed and disseminated through the iBMC.
3) global market opportunities: the project has created and disseminated open source knowledge which enables cities, NGOs, local SMEs and citizens to find and use their opportunities in NBS. The roadmap to NBS co-creation, the guidelines for NBS monitoring and the iBMC are provided by the project partners for free replication.
4) EU policies: The results of proGIreg have proven that NBS can help to implement EU programmes and strategies:
– greening buildings and the improved greening of urban areas in other NBS contribute to the EU Climate Change Adaptation Strategy by reducing the heat island effect and reducing indoor and outdoor heat stress.
– proGIreg has demonstrated that NBS can function as carbon sinks in urban areas and thus contribute to the EU’s achievement of the COP Agreements on climate change mitigation.
– with NBS that foster productive outputs of Gi like the creation of new soil, urban community gardens and urban aquaponics proGIreg has created techniques and BMs that are new opportunities for the farm to fork strategy to increase urban food production.
– proGIreg has shown how the EU Biodiversity Strategy can be implemented in cooperation with local communities by involving citizens in the creation of new habitats for pollinators.NBS 8 Turin: Butterfly monitoring activities involving youngsters and fragile peopleNBS5 Turin: indoor green wall in via Torrazza schoolNBS3 Zagreb: Therapeutic gardenNBS7 Ningbo: Long-term observation of water quality provides data for environmental compensationNBS6&8 Dortmund: new green corridor to Deusenberg landfill with pollinator friendly vegetationNBS3 Ningbo: Green lake shore. Planting of aquatic plants in Moon Lake completed and in maintenanceNBS3 Dortmund: raised urban gardening beds at St. UrbanusNBS3 Zagreb: Using the therapeutic gardenNBS 3 Turin: Educational garden within the Orti Generali community gardens siteNBS5 Turin: outdoor green wall at homeless shelter in June 2022NBS4 Dortmund: Openening of the aquaponics at Hansa coking plant in June 2023NBS 3 Zagreb: Therapeutic garden in May 2022The proGIreg NBS 1-8NBS3 Zagreb: modernization of urban gardensNBS4&8 Dortmund: The selected aquaponics site is also pollinator friendly