SUNLOOP
Summary
Place-user Interactions
FNS, 2023-2024 BiodivNBS
HEPIA, Université de Fribourg, UMons (BE), Ecole nationale supérieure de paysage Versailles (FR), CSTB (FR), Jardin Botanique de Meise (BE), Sciences Po (FR), IRD (FR), Institut Paris Région (FR), Ville de Ris-Orangis (FR), Agglo Fribourg (FR), Charleroi Metropole (BE), Natagora (BE)
Séréna Vanbutsele
Skills directory
Spontaneous Urban Nature and Local No Net Land Take Policies
The SUNLOOP project aims to demonstrate the value of Spontaneous Urban Nature (SUN) spaces for urban planning, and to highlight the conditions under which their non-management is a feasible option in the face of climate resilience, urban biodiversity and urban development challenges.
SUNs are underutilized urban areas (wastelands, vacant lots, green interstices) that naturally promote biodiversity, climate regulation and ecological connectivity. Today, there is no official definition, and there are many different ways of looking at these spaces, depending on disciplinary approaches. To assess the pressures linked to urban development to which SUNs are subject, and to analyze their ecological and social values (meeting spaces, public space, space for appropriation, co-creation), the project is developing an interdisciplinary approach (ecology, geography, urban planning, participatory science). Drawing on participatory science and awareness-raising, the project also develops close contact with local authorities and organises collective field experiments.
SUNLOOP is organized into five research work packages (WPs), articulated by three collective workshops, which are key moments when scientific partners and public authorities from Fribourg (Switzerland), Charleroi (Belgium) and Grand Paris Sud (France) come together. These three territories form the project's study areas, where three key stages of the SUNLOOP project are tested: inventorying SUNs, observing and analyzing SUNs, and testing non-intervention strategies on SUNs.