News

This August, CLEVER Cities Hamburg had the pleasure of taking part in a 2-day workshop on strategies for replicating successful nature-based solutions (NBS) hosted by our sister project, proGIreg. Participants were invited to visit multiple NBS project cites in proIireg city Dortmund. Standouts included a Movement Park (outdoor gym), a Forest Garden at a local church, two aquaponics greenhouses located at a former coal plant, and a new footpath through former landfill Deusenberg Park. 

While most of these projects are still being constructed, the opportunity to see the sites in person and discuss the project planning, implementation, and maintenance processes provided participants with a solid overview of the wide range of possibilities offered by NBS. The group shared experiences involving residents in NBS planning–a precondition for cocreation-and discussed the administrative structures and processes best suited to NBS implementation. 

A strength of the event was the diversity of its audience. People came from as far away as Italy and Croatia, and as near to home as a few cities away in Germany. Participants also brought unique backgrounds and expertise, hailing from academia, city administration, service provider organizations, and NBS landscape planners. 

proGireg’s workshop was not designed to help cities duplicate their NBS projects to a T, but to share a framework and methodology developed over the course of the project that supports communities in leading similar projects that have been adapted to their local context. This goes beyond the purely technical planning aspect of NBS to include monitoring, maintenance, financing, and co-governance. The workshop also transparently acknowledged that, for NBS to be successful in a new context, there may be a need to first adjust and reform underlying systemic structures in the local administration. CLEVER Cities Hamburg is bringing this perspective back to their work locally as well as within the larger CLEVER Cities project, in particular with regards to the replication maps, upscaling plans, and policy briefs that are currently in development. All in all, this event facilitated incredibly meaningful knowledge exchange, and sparked discussions that are sure to be continued at the final CLEVER Cities conference taking place next year. An enthusiastic thank you is owed to Dortmund and larger proGIreg teams for organizing this workshop and providing cities an opportunity to learn from and with one another.