EnRoute

EnRoute stands for Enhancing Resilience of urban ecosystems through green infrastructure. EnRoute is a project of the European Commission in the framework of the EU Biodiversity Strategy and the Green Infrastructure Strategy. EnRoute provides scientific knowledge of how urban ecosystems can support urban planning at different stages of policy and for various spatial scales and how to help policy-making for sustainable cities. It aims to promote the application of urban green infrastructure at local level and delivers guidance on the creation, management and governance of urban green infrastructure. Importantly, it illustrates how collaboration between and across different policy levels can lead to concrete green infrastructure policy setting.

Public posts

New EU's biodiversity strategy has now also urban biodiversity targets (thanks to EnRoute)

Today, 20 May 2020 ,  the European Commission adopted a new biodiversity strategy to 2030. It sets ambitious targets to protect more nature, to restore ecosystems and to step up governance, monitoring and global efforts. 

Urban biodiversity is now part of the EU biodiversity policy. 

As part of a wider nature restoration plan, more focus will go to cities. To bring nature back to cities and reward community action, the Commission calls on European cities of at least 20,000 inhabitants to develop ambitious Urban Greening Plans by the end of...


TAIEX-EIR PEER 2 PEER workshop on ‘Maintaining and Enhancing Ecosystem Services in Urban Regions’ on the 4th and 5th of July 2019 in Gelderland, the Netherlands.

About 40 regional biodiversity and ecosystem-services experts from European regions will meet during this workshop in order to exchange knowledge and best practices to better maintain urban ecosystem services.

TAIEX-EIR PEER 2 PEER is a practical tool of the European Commission that facilitates peer-to-peer learning between environmental authorities in EU Member States. This workshop will be organised in cooperation with the network of the Environmental Conference of the Regions of Europe (ENCORE).  ...


Call for applications for the selection of members of the future Horizon Europe Mission Board for climate-neutral and smart cities

The European Commission launched a call for experts to join ‘Mission Boards’, which will advise the Commission for the identification and implementation of missions in Horizon Europe, the next EU research and innovation programme. There will be five ‘Mission Boards’ including one for  Climate-neutral and smart cities.

Interested people can apply here

Link and more information: ...


Final EnRoute meeting: conference report

EnRoute Final Conference

The EnRoute final conference was co-organized by the European Commission and the Committee of the Regions (CoR). The event was part of the 14th meeting of the Technical Platform for Cooperation on the Environment.

With over 100 participants, including urban policymakers from across Europe, members of the CoR and different policy departments of the Commission, the conference was an excellent opportunity to showcase how EnRoute succeeded in connecting science with policymaking at the urban level. EnRoute has...




EU helps cities work together for a sustainable future

Cities are said to hold the key to worldwide sustainable development, and this is precisely why the EU launched the International Urban Cooperation programme (IUC) in 2016, to help Europe's cities work and share best practices with their counterparts elsewhere in the world. A win-win to tackle urban development challenges. The latest call for interest has been published recently and is open till 22 February.

​Within this round of pairings, European cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants will have the opportunity to cooperate with counterparts in Japan, China, the...


Germany will make its cities greener.

Germany intends to increase the amount of green space in its cities, particularly in socially deprived areas, according to an ‘urban nature master plan’ published by the environment ministry on 22 October 2018.  It proposes new measures to increase parkland, urban forests and recreational areas as part of a €15 million programme set to launch in 2020, with funding aimed at promoting biodiversity and setting up green learning spaces.

Source: ENDS Europe.

Article [in german]: ...


Assessing Nature-Based Recreation to Support Urban Green Infrastructure Planning in Trento (Italy)

Maps of Recreation Potential (RP) and Recreation Opportunity Spectrum (ROS) in the city of Trento.

Providing adequate green spaces for nature-based recreation is among the main goals of urban planning, but commonly-used indicators offer a partial view on the issue. EnRoute scientists Chiara Cortinovis, Grazia Zulian and Davide Geneletti present an application of the ESTIMAP-recreation model to the city of Trento (Italy).  This model maps the recreation opportunities for urban dwellers. The paper demonstrates how such data can be used for urban planning. 

A link to the open access paper published in Land is available here...


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