Building Tomorrow Together!

That was the motto of the European Week of Regions & Cities 2025 that brought together 6,000+ participants from cities, regions, civil society, academia and beyond, to Brussels to work on making Europe more cohesive, sustainable, and inclusive. The Week was organized between 13-15 October including activities from high-level policy debates to grassroots workshops. The focus was on topics like ensuring people can thrive in their communities, empowering cities of the future, and driving growth through smarter cohesion policy.

DesirMED partners Dynamic Vision, C-KIC and Wageningen University attended the event and the sessions co-organized by the project:

- During the workshop "Peer-to-peer learning on replicating and upscaling Nature-based Solutions for climate adaptation", fruitful exchanges took place on how to move from individual NbS projects towards upscaling and transformation in territorial level.

Stefan Greiving (TU Dortmund University), represented NBS4EU cluster and explained its synthesis, joint activities and its perspective on replication and mainstreaming of solutions. DesirMED’s approach to engage with other regions and communities to identify opportunities for replication and up-scaling was shared with the audience.

Key messages from NBS4EU cluster:

• Enabling conditions for replication and upscaling include:

-NbS promise diverse co-benefits for residents and land owners

-Peer-to-peer learning from the very beginning between regions and municipalities supported by scientific evidence

-Inspiring pioneers to motivate actors/regions

-Acess to funding

• Bottlenecks for replication

-Governance fragmentation, institutional locks-in, lack of transformative innovations

-Limited expertise at local level

-Limited access to land

-Lack of tailored made business models and financial instruments

In addition, the session included a presentation of Directed project approach by  Janne Parviainen (Stockholm Environment Institute).

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- Another session was co-organized by DesirMED on “Bankable Public Green Infrastructure and Services: A Practical Approach”.

Naturance project, Urban Agenda, Net Zero Cities and DesirMED brought together Dušan Pollich (City of Ostrava), Étienne Aulotte (Brussels Environment), Ana-Maria Mitroi-Ciobica (European Investment Bank) and Jaroslav Mysiak (CMCC), to explore how cities can bridge the gap between public funding and private investment and how environmental and social benefits can translate into tangible value for urban resilience.

Key takeaways:

• Bankable NbS should ensure social justice and improve inequalities
• Need to reduce institutional complexity and bureaucracy
• Strong preparation, governance, and partnerships determine bankability
• Metrics and data are essential to demonstrate impact and attract finance
• Cities like Ostrava are examples of postindustrial transformation through reinvesting the value created by green infrastructure