City: Brussels

Urbinat has an ambitious objective: to restore life, in every sense of the word, in the isolated and disadvantaged neighbourhoods of the big cities. Brussels is part of this new European research project, which will propose solutions for a neighbourhood in Neder-Over-Heembeek.Urbinat has an ambitious objective: to restore life, in every sense of the word, in the isolated and disadvantaged neighbourhoods of the big cities. Brussels is part of this new European research project, which will propose solutions for a neighbourhood in Neder-Over-Heembeek.Urbinat has an ambitious objective: to restore life, in every sense of the word, in the isolated and disadvantaged neighbourhoods of the big cities. Brussels is part of this new European research project, which will propose solutions for a neighbourhood in Neder-Over-Heembeek.

“This is a challenging project,” says Professor Gonçalo Canto Moniz, an architect by training, researcher at the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra and project coordinator.

“With 28 partners and nearly 50 cities from 15 countries (including several non-European countries such as Brazil, China, Iran, Japan and Oman), our objective is to reintegrate “forgotten” neighbourhoods, often far from the city centre, often disadvantaged too, using nature-based solutions (NBS). »

“Concretely, we are going to build ‘green corridors’ or, more precisely, ‘healthy’ corridors, because the aim is not only to ‘green’ the city, but also to redevelop social and cultural life. These corridors will be both physical and immaterial”, says Professor Moniz.