REGENSOILL will create a network of five transdisciplinary Living Labs in Birmingham (UK), Budapest (HU), Lille Metropole (FR), Upper Silesia (PL), and a Baltic cluster (EE–LV–LT) to support the clean-up and sustainable redevelopment of brownfields across Europe. Brownfields are areas of land that were previously used for industrial, commercial, or other activities and are now abandoned, underused, or degraded. Their soils are often polluted or damaged by past activities, affecting ecosystems, human health, and opportunities for sustainable urban development. REGENSOILL will contribute directly to the EU Soil Mission goal of achieving healthy soils by 2030 by developing, testing, and replicating solutions together with local stakeholders.
Reclaiming Europe's Forgotten Land
REGENSOILL Kicks Off a 4.5-Year Mission to Turn Brownfields into Soil-Safe Assets
Birmingham, UK, 18 September 2026, Europe has a land problem hiding in plain sight. Thousands of brownfield sites, former industrial plots, disused rail yards, old refineries and mining land, sit idle across the continent, too contaminated or too poorly understood to safely redevelop. As cities battle housing shortages, shrinking green space and the mounting pressures of climate change, this stranded land represents one of Europe’s most underused resources: real estate that could become parks, housing, biodiversity corridors or urban farmland, but instead depresses local property values and quietly carries health and environmental risks that are rarely measured consistently from one site to the next.
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Technical enquiries
- Daniel Jozef Nowakowski, Coordinator
- Aston University, United Kingdom
- d.j.nowakowski@aston.ac.uk
Media enquiries
- Corinna Barnstedt, Communication Manager
- European Science Communication Institute, Germany
- cb@esci.eu
© 2026 REGENSOILL – Made by ESCI
Funded by the European Union under grant agreement No. 101297170. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily refect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.