HUN

Revitalizing Post-Industrial Peripheries

Regional Network for Sustainable Urban Regeneration

2025-2026

Contact:
Gergely Papp

Project partners:
University of Ostrava, Faculty of Arts (Ostrava, CS),
Spolka (Košice, SK),
Uniwersytet Rzeszowski, Institute of History (Rzeszów, PL)

Photo: Diósgyőr, Miskolc, 1966. Fortepan / Image No. 220002 / Donor: Judit N. Kósa

Revitalizing Post-Industrial Peripheries in East-Central Europe

Former industrial and mining zones across East-Central Europe—especially in the urban and peri-urban fringes of mid-sized and shrinking cities—face severe challenges. These areas are marked by environmental degradation, economic disinvestment, and long-term social marginalization. Despite their historical significance to the region’s industrial growth, they often remain outside of mainstream planning agendas.

This initiative builds on the work of the Postindustrial Urban Periphery project to reframe these neglected territories as spaces of both risk and potential. We support community-driven, ecologically sound regeneration strategies rooted in local knowledge, while promoting cross-border exchange among actors facing similar postindustrial legacies.

Our main objective is to co-create a transnational framework for East-Central Europe to evaluate and transform brownfield sites in ways that are socially just and environmentally responsible. Through local engagement and regional collaboration, the project empowers municipalities, civic groups, researchers, and economic actors to reimagine these peripheries as future commons.

Project outcomes:

  • A co-designed brownfield regeneration assessment toolkit, developed with local and regional stakeholders;

    assessment framework

    presentation template

    country presentations HUSK / PL / CZ
  • A set of comparative case studies highlighting adaptive reuse, and social, economic, and institutional innovation, and a regional adaptive framework, methodological toolkit, and policy recommendations on the postindustrial.network online platform
  • A growing regional network of practitioners committed to a socially just and green transition of postindustrial urban areas in East-Central Europe.

    audio recordings on regional regenerations

This project is co-financed by the governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from the International Visegrad Fund, which promotes sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.