The introduction video contains information about the project:
Peri-urban areas are hybrid spaces of strictly rural to urban transition. Usually located at the fringe of a city, these areas are subject to fast changes and conflicting pattern of land and resource uses.
The pressure due to the increasing urbanization trend has several impacts at environmental, social and economic level on the peri-urban areas such as:
- increasing soil consumption
- loss of ecosystem services
- reduced resilience towards climate change effects
- soil speculation
Protection and promotion of natural heritage in peri-urban areas is a policy challenge that require innovative approaches. There is the need to reshape the model of territorial governance, overcoming the dichotomy between natural resources preservation and economic development.
The objective of PROSPERA, a project financed by the Interreg Europe programme, is to address policies at regional and local level in order to raise the attractiveness of natural landscapes (1) in peri-urban contexts, restore ecosystem services (2) and provide a healthier environment (3). The project strategy is to enhance the potential of private and public sectors to exploit natural heritage in a sustainable way, creating new linkages between rural and urban areas.
Seven partners from 5 European cities are involved in the project. All the partners have different demographic background and challenges to face, but they have also implemented innovative solutions that can be shared with the other regions.
In the first stage of the project, PROSPERA partners develop, with the support of their local stakeholder groups, a regional analysis in order to identify at least 15 Good Practices, that are then shared through study visits and knowledge exchange sessions.
Inspired by the experiences and discovered good practices, in the second stage of the project each partner defines a Local Action Plan to improve its policy instruments within a defined timeline and a set of activities.
By sharing knowledge between European regions through the INTERREG Europe programme, we can innovate local policies to make peri-urban areas prosper and improve people’s quality of life.
