Implementation of Sustainable Land Use in Integrated Environmental Management of Functional Urban Areas

The LUMAT project objective is the implementation of Sustainable Land Use and pilot projects in Integrated Environmental Management in 7 Central European Functional Urban Areas. The LUMAT partnership of cities and regions, environmental agencies and research institutions develop integrated "Functional Areas Management Strategies (FAMS)" with shared transnational territorial and scientific competence. FAMS will include planning strategies with innovative technology supported with citizen participation. Local stakeholders will initiate pilot projects by using new interactive information tools from the Urban Atlas and citizen observatories. The ecosystem service concept will support the assessment and decision-making process.
The implementation will be based on agreed action plans and pilot/demonstration projects for land and soil including information base and tool for the management of urban-peri-urban relationships. Action plans include financial instruments and institutional solutions e.g. land management agencies or permanent intermunicipal working groups. Tools on FAMS methodology and participation will be an integrative part of FAMS (minimize threats and environmental compensation to get more liveable places starting with the pilots in all regions (successful brownfield redevelopment, green infrastructure, sustainable land use on contaminated land).
The project relies on the interplay between strategies and instruments beyond existing practice and on a suitably comprehensive deployment of tools in these areas, including terms of reference (WP1), cooperation, organisation and management by action plans (WP2), investment and pilot actions (WP3). The proposal has already been developed at regional stakeholders meetings and one international workshop in Vienna. All partners committed their engagement by Letters of Support to the Lead Partner. The transfer of outputs and dissemination includes international networks AESOP, ECTP-CEU and ISOCARP, METREXR 3.3 Status of integrated environmental managment capacities of the public sector and related entities in functional urban areas achieved through transnational cooperation for making them more liveable places.The project results will form following outputs:
- trainings on the topics of: reduction of land-use conflicts, building of FUA identity, ecosystem services.
- tools (management structures, decision support system).
- action plans of integrated specific character for FUAs in the partner’s regions based on a common transnational format (concerning solutions enhancing urban/peri-urban coherence in the field of land and soil resources management).
The project will aim at the better integration of environmental management in functional urban areas with land and ecosystem services management. The expected results of the project will be shown in visible changes in partners’ regions.
These changes will have a form of concrete physical changes in the urban environment such as site rehabilitation (small investment in Ruda Śląska), changes in form of new management structures (region of Graz, Trnava region, Torino Metropolitan Area, Ljubljana region), changes in soil sealing (reported as a prognosis of environmental effects – reduction of soil sealing and urban sprawl – of implementation of action plan for Slovenian pilot area).
All these changes will be achieved by a transnational cooperation of institutional and regional partners who will be involved (with other invited entities) in trainings and the work on concrete project outputs. In this way the project will contribute to enhancement of integrated environmental management capacities in public sector and other entities in FUAs.