Abstract
Traditional industry and natural resources exploitation processes represented the stepping stone for intensive urbanization, contributing to the creation of cities and society as we know them. Economic development based on intensive exploitation activities with a negative impact on nature has clearly shown to be unsustainable. The city of Baia Mare, located in the Romanian region of Maramureș, is one of the best examples of post-industrial cities that are developing a holistic restructuring process while struggling with the urban, social, economic, and environmental effects of the former industrial and mining activities. As the former mining capital of Romania, its main urban challenge is to re-incorporate its highly polluted brownfields and mitigate the degraded environmental conditions. The area became of international concern after the January 2000 event, when accidental cyanide spills affected the natural ecosystems of the Tisza and Danube rivers. Even though the mining and metallurgical industry closed, the soil is still polluted with high levels of heavy-metal contaminants (approximately 627 ha at the metropolitan level). The subject of our Case-Study Report is project SPIRE -Smart Post-industrial Regeneration Ecosystems. Financed under the 4th call of the UIA programme, SPIRE is an experimental project that aims to start a long-term environmental, social and economic redevelopment in Baia Mare by implementing gentle, ecological, regenerative solutions to the contaminated areas. When talking about heavy-metal contaminated land, municipalities have limited options to overcome the obstacle. Traditional soil remediation is expensive, and when it comes to private-owned land for developments or conversions, there is the risk of poor-quality interventions. The low level of community’s awareness concerning health risks also represents a concern. SPIRE opted for an ecologic and relatively cheap solution, of reusing the contaminated land of the city of Baia Mare, enabling an experimental and community-oriented process of remediation of 5 pilot sites (summing 7.5 ha of land). This is possible through adaptive phytoremediation and the creation of new urban ecosystems. This Case-Study Report discusses the solutions adopted and how the framework was created. SPIRE developed a Remediation Toolkit, put to test in a co-designed landscaping process of the 5 experimental sites. When implementing smart, innovative, regenerative ecosystems in the current social and cultural context of Baia Mare, it is considered very valuable to raise awareness about environmental issues and to promote good ecological behaviour. This is achieved by actively involving the local community, businesses, and local actors and stakeholders in all components/pillars of the SPIRE initiative: 1. Site transformations: co-design activities resulted in the landscaping solutions used for planting and path/alleys tracing, followed by a series of workshops for micro-interventions solutions; 2. Circular economy framework: SPIRE constructs a multi-level framework for upcycling biomass, resulted from phytoremediation (pilot thermal installation, and innovative start-up ideas that re-uses biomass); 3. Community-oriented digital solutions: with the purpose of generating enhanced participation/engagement of communities in the SPIRE project (digital token for incentivising positive and environmentally friendly behaviour), providing GIS-based tools and platforms for participatory decision making. 4. Community innovative HUB and SPIRE Makerspace: representing the physical infrastructure as the interface between project and community, supporting local businesses and innovative ecologic initiatives, by putting at disposal knowledge, tools, working space. This Report conveys valuable knowledge on an ongoing experimental initiative, geared towards the implementation of innovative, smart, and regenerative ecosystems in post-industrial cities. Our Report provides technical and operational knowledge and insights that can be useful for the reproduction of similar approaches in other cities and countries.
