

Baia Mare is currently transitioning from its past as Romania’s mining capital towards a new resilient-based sustainable development model. The SPIRE project follows the triple bottom line at the nexus of environmental, societal and economic matters.

From the social lens: (1) Urban health improvement due to soil remediation; (2) Awareness, knowledge and capacity building related to sustainability; (3) Citizens’ environmental behaviour shifts towards an eco-friendly culture.
From the environmental lens: (1) Circa seven hectares of polluted land reclaimed for public use; (2) Urban landscape co-design and co-production through phytoremediation techniques; (3) Urban system re-naturalisation and re-connection strategy.
From the economic lens: (1) Underused local resources stimulation; (2) Bio-based products and business models; (3) Bio-based energy supply to reduce the overall GHG emissions in Baia Mare.
It seeks to apply phytoremediation techniqus to contaminated land, generate inclusive land-use participatory management while changing behaviours by recovering the city’s health and the trust in authorities, and create new local bio-based value chains developing new green business models, therefore is a revolutionary project.
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