SUNLOOP

Context

The SUNLOOP project addresses the challenges posed by biodiversity loss and climate change in urban environments, focusing on spaces of Spontaneous Urban Nature (SUN) as a potential NbS within the context of “No Net Land Take” policies. These policies, that are generalizing throughout Europe, aim to limit the artificialization of urban surfaces, making wastelands, derelict spaces, and any informal green spaces valuable for urban development. Despite their potential social and ecological benefits, these spaces often face neglect due to their marginalization in urban planning. The project seeks to enhance understanding and awareness of SUN spaces that already exist in the urban fabric. The goal is to influence urban planning policies by integrating the socio-ecological value of spontaneous biodiversity.

Main objectives

The SUNLOOP project’s objectives are:

• To define SUN spaces according to various representations, professional practices (including scientific ones), policies and territorial contexts, with a focus on the interrelations between spontaneous nature and urban biodiversity;
• To understand how the socio-ecological knowledge and representations of SUN spaces can be enhanced by a pluridisciplinary approach involving architects, planners, landscape architects, ecologists, biologists, pedologists, geographers, sociologists, geographic information specialists, artists;
• To uncover conditions under which representations and actions (or voluntary lack of actions) on SUN spaces effectively form NbS in urban areas;
• To understand the discrepancy between the perception of the biodiversity of a space and the actual biodiversity supported by this space, to encourage a change of viewpoint on the part of local actors, to recognize multiple values, potentials, as well as downsides on the role of SUN spaces as a NbS in urban planning;
• To strengthen the international networking of local actors and academics who are committed to maintaining and enhancing SUN spaces and to propose integrated methods in urban policies to do so.

Main activities

The project emphasizes interdisciplinary research, combining environmental sciences, citizen science, urban planning and project-based and artistic approaches. The scientific team brings together expertise from Swiss, Belgian, and French academic institutions, as well as local stakeholders, sharing local perspectives on medium size cities that witnesses specific urban pressure in the common perspective of “No Net Land Take” policies.

Five workpackages (WPs) structure the project and are articulated with three local workshops that enable the interdisciplinary and experimental approach on the three application territories. These three major milestones gather transnational knowledge related firstly to the inventory and identification of SUN spaces, secondly to the observation and understanding of their socio-ecological co-benefits and thirdly to the experimentation of NbS using participatory and inclusive practices