In the on-going EU-funded URSOILL Research and Innovation project, iUE leads the co-creation of 5 Living Labs for healthy urban soil. The project, which started in September 2025, recently produced the results from a discovery phase focused on understanding the local ecosystems of the 5 Living Labs.

At iUE we believe that urban soils are a strategic urban infrastructure: urban soils are not as passive or residual land components, they are deeply intertwined with multiple urban functions (environmental performance, land use, and long-term resilience), but they remain insufficiently integrated into planning frameworks.

In URSOILL, together with Politecnico di Milano, we implemented a structured discovery phase that brings together environmental, spatial, and socio-economic perspectives within a broader co-creation process. This phase helped to position soil as a critical layer of urban systems and supported the development and implementation of soil health solutions across the Living Lab experimental sites.

The Institute for Urban Excellence (iUE) is proud to announce we are, once more, a partner of Urban Future, the milestone European event for city-changers around the globe. 

Taking place in Ljubljana (Slovenia) between March 24 and 27, Urban Future 26 (UF26) will bring together city leaders, planners, change-makers, educators, politicians, and other experts from cities worldwide to share valuable know-how and expertise on sustainable cities. From lessons learned to innovative solutions and practical strategies, the event features inspiring sessions, field trips and fascinating side events structured along six core thematic tracks: circularity, city centers, tactical urbanism, resilient societies, innovation in governance, and change communications.

The Institute invites all interested parties to attend the Better Cities Event and meet us there! We are happy to connect, exchange ideas and find space for new collaborations and projects.

Find the event’s full programme here, and buy tickets following this link.

In February 2026, five URSOILL Living Labs successfully held their first local co-creation sessions, marking a first step in bringing urban soil challenges into a shared, collaborative space. These sessions gathered a range of stakeholders (including local authorities, researchers, civil society organisations, and practitioners) to jointly explore their urban soil health journey. 

As coordinators for the co-creation process, we worked closely with the Living Lab teams to support the design and facilitation of these meetings (common guidance, interactive formats, and participatory tools) to ensure that each session could capture their local contexts while contributing to a shared URSOILL approach. 

Across the five Living Labs, discussions focused on: 

– identifying key soil-related challenges in the local context, 

– mapping opportunities and barriers (PESTLE through stakeholder perspectives) 

– initiating dialogue on potential pathways towards healthier urban soils 

The sessions also served as an entry point to assess soil literacy levels, understand stakeholder expectations, and build the foundations for engagement throughout the project. 

The co-creation sessions demonstrated strong interest from local stakeholders to remain involved in future thematic and site-based discussions. 

These first meetings mark the beginning of a 4-year process to not only support urban soil restoration across 50+ sites but also identify broader interactions between soil health and land-use decisions at the city scale. 

iUE, project partner of JUSTNature, was in Belgium during the second week of February 2026 for the project’s Final Event. The two-day gathering was an opportunity to celebrate the project’s achievements, deploying co-created Nature-based Solutions (NbS) across seven European cities and advancing fairer, greener urban environments for the course of four and a half years.

During the project’s lifetime, iUE’s work focused on organising cross-learning activities, fostering city-to-city exchange both among partner and external regions. Additionally, we conducted research on state-of-the-art co-governance schemes, applied to the deployment of NbS. Our work also included communication and dissemination tasks, ensuring the outcomes and learnings of the project reached a wide audience, from practitioners to researchers, the general public and policy makers.

The Institute for Urban Excellence (iUE), advisory partner of the Interreg Down to Earth project, was in Galicia (Spain) in early February 2026 for the project’s sixth Study Visit. Finalising its third year and wrapping-up the project’s core phase, the visit focused on the topic of policy instruments that strengthen the role of farmers and land managers in fighting climate change.

The trip’s first day saw the organisation of the project’s 3rd Thematic Conference, an international event bringing together researchers, local farmers, entrepreneurs and sector experts to discuss climate resilience in the agroforestry sector. Titled ‘Managing Land to Protect Territories: Good Practices for Rural Resilience,’ the event also provided the opportunity to present the third Joint Thematic Report developed by the Down to Earth consortium. iUE is currently working on accompanying factsheets and infographics for further dissemination of the project’s research outputs, which will be released after the report’s official publication.

The Institute for Urban Excellence (iUE) participated in the kick-off meeting of the Horizon Europe project SpurUP, held in Athens on 21–22 January 2026. The meeting brought together all project partners to align on the project’s objectives, work plan, and collaborative approach for the coming months. During the partner introduction session, iUE presented its motivation for joining SpurUP, its role within the consortium, and its expected contribution to the project’s impact on participating cities.

iUE highlighted its strong commitment to addressing fragmented governance in peri-urban areas by fostering inclusive, just, and participatory processes that connect sectors, stakeholders, and communities. Throughout the work package presentations and technical discussions, iUE actively contributed to exchanges on stakeholder engagement, co-creation methodologies, and the integration of social, institutional, and human dimensions across the project.

In particular, iUE’s involvement focused on governance and participation aspects, including stakeholder mapping and site analysis, the development of participatory governance frameworks, and support for the co-creation, validation, and uptake of digital tools. By engaging in the strategic and technical discussions shaping the first implementation phase, iUE helped lay the foundation for effective collaboration, capacity building, knowledge transfer, and long-term impact within the SpurUP project.

On 11th December 2025, the Institute for Urban Excellence (iUE) organised a special session “Soil Matters: Spatial Planning and Design with Soil“, as part of the Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions (SSPCR) International Conference. Organised by Yoann Clouet, this session addressed the critical challenge of soil representation in planning (and design) frameworks. 

This special session drew from on-going research as part of the EU-funded project SPADES (Spatial Planning and DEsign with Soil), and invited contributions from other researchers. 

The session brought to light reflections on the needed integration of soil health into urban planning and design frameworks. Despite soil’s pivotal role in delivering essential ecosystem services (ESS) and addressing challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss, soil and its health remains underrepresented in spatial planning and decision-making processes. This is framed by the European Union’s objectives of No Net Land Take (NNLT) by 2050 and Healthy Soil by 2050, and the recent adoption of the EU Soil Monitoring Law.

The primary focii included:

» The current focus of EU targets (NNLT, no net soil sealing) primarily on quantitative restrictions, while neglecting crucial aspects of soil quality. 

» The lack of specialized knowledge and tools among spatial planners necessary to effectively address soil-related issues. 

» The need for capacity building and tools to mainstream soil considerations into planning, especially given that small and medium-sized municipalities are major contributors to soil sealing but often lack the mandate or resources to fully integrate soil conservation strategies.