Third prize winner in category Green Transition and Sustainability in EPSA 2023-24
Context
The city of Baia Mare, located on the banks of the Săsar River in northwestern Romania, is the capital of Maramureș County. This city is currently in transition from its past as the mining capital of Romania to a new model of sustainable development based on resilience. Baia Mare was heavily polluted by mining and industrial activities, so it has a lot of contaminated land, posing environmental and health risks to the population. Partly due to these problems, the city also suffers from social and economic problems such as unemployment, poverty and low quality of life.
SPIRE is one of the few Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) projects, financed under the fourth call of the UIA Initiative, which supports the most innovative cities of Europe in piloting yet untested and completely novel solutions to pressing urban challenges. Baia Mare is the only Eastern European city to be funded in this call.
Objectives
In this context, the Smart Post-industrial Regenerative Ecosystem (SPIRE) project was created. The project pursues social, environmental and economic objectives. From the social perspective, the project aims to improve urban health through soil remediation: awareness raising, knowledge and capacity building related to sustainability and shifting citizens’ environmental behaviour towards an eco-friendly culture. Regarding environmental objectives, SPIRE entails the reclamation of about 7 ha of polluted land for public use, co-designing and co-producing the urban landscape through phytoremediation techniques, and implementing an urban system re-naturalisation and re-connection strategy. Economically, the project seeks to stimulate underused local resources, develop bio-based products and business models, and supply bio-based energy to reduce Baia Mare’s overall greenhouse gas emissions.
Implementation
The SPIRE project applies a nature-based solution – phytoremediation – to heal the urban soil from heavy-metal contamination. Willow roots can extract heavy metals from the soil over a period of 5 to 15 years. This is the first time such a technique has been tested in a highly contaminated city with severe public health problems. The project has renatured Baia Mare through phytoremediation at five pilot sites, which are being mapped and monitored by an iGIS smart system – an urban information system designed for planning and monitoring urban areas – to prove the healing results for the city and its inhabitants. A phytoremediation calculator has been developed based on the measurements of soil contamination to estimate when the soils will reach normal levels. Hence, digital applications and solutions feature prominently in the project design. The project also involves co-designing participatory processes with students and public monitoring of the solutions through an iGIS smart system. A digital token, the iLEU, has been created to provoke an environmental behavioural shift related to a proactive transport and circular waste mindset. The project has started to change the awareness, knowledge and capacity building related to sustainability and citizens’ environmental behaviour shifts towards an eco-friendly culture. One notable activity was ‘Donate Your Christmas Tree’, which transformed donated fir trees into biomass used in the city’s greenhouses.
The SPIRE HUB also serves as the project’s operations headquarters. It is a physical space where citizens can meet, share experiences and learning, and use the machinery at their disposal. The ultimate goal is to unite the community and create a new urban reality by 2050.