NEW URBAN LANDSCAPES
Regenerating Cities • Revealing Opportunities
SAVE THE DATE
16+17 OCT 2025
The Conference
Today, over 56% of the global population lives in urban areas, a figure projected to rise to nearly 70% by 2050. This long-standing evolution, whether through rural exodus or international migration, has not always been accompanied by long-term planning. Many of our cities have expanded quickly, often carelessly, layering concrete over soil, erecting walls instead of weaving connections.
The result? A double injustice, environmental and social.
Environmental injustice manifests itself in how urban quality is unequally distributed. In Brussels, the most vulnerable neighbourhoods, situated in the so-called ‘poor crescent’, are also the most densely built-up, with few green spaces and extreme urban heat phenomena. Across Europe, from Paris over Milan to Berlin, similar inequalities emerge: where nature retreats, citizens’ lives get harder, and those with the fewest resources suffer most.
Social injustice spreads into uneven redevelopment projects that displace rather than include, into planning strategies that neglect daily human needs, and into spatial segregation that reinforces exclusion.
Faced with this, we must reorient our vision of the city, not by endlessly adding, but by transforming what already exists, by uncovering what lies hidden in plain sight.
NEW URBAN LANDSCAPES is an invitation to rethink urban space through three core strategies:
● ADAPT the existing fabric: unsealing soils, greening surfaces, allowing water to infiltrate. Place Flagey in Brussels or Place de Catalogne in Paris are exemplary projects in which stone has given way to plants.
● RECLAIM underused spaces: abandoned areas can become vital. The Marais Wiels in Brussels is now a haven of urban biodiversity. In Berlin, Tempelhof airfield is a massive public park on the site of a disused airport.
● UNFOLD spatial opportunities: dismantling concrete to de-urbanise, as in the Parc de la Sennette in Brussels; opening up rooftops to collective uses, as seen in the Rotterdam Rooftop Programme; or reimagining interiors, like the Gare Maritime at Tour & Taxis, once industrial, now a lush and vibrant public hall.
These strategies align with broader programs like the New European Bauhaus, the European Green Deal, and growing city climate agendas. They speak to a new urban imperative: to see cities as living ecosystems, inclusive, sustainable, and beautiful.
Over two days, we will bring together thinkers, practitioners, public bodies and citizens to discuss tools, challenges, and paths forward aiming for real solutions and shared inspiration.
What if urban landscapes were not just a backdrop, but a driver of transformation?
What if public space became a collective right and a shared opportunity?
Guided tours
Brussels
Brussels, capital of Belgium and of the European Union, is a city where historic layers meet contemporary urban challenges. In recent years, major transformations such as the pedestrianisation of central boulevards and the Canal Plan (BKP) have highlighted how landscape architecture can reshape mobility, public life, and former industrial areas. The Bouwmeester Maître Architecte (BMA) plays a central role in these evolutions, ensuring architectural quality while embedding social, ecological, and cultural ambitions into projects that redefine Brussels as a livable, dynamic metropolis.
Antwerp
Antwerp, Belgium’s second largest city and an important European port, is internationally recognised for bold and ambitious urban projects. The Ring Project (Oosterweel) is a landmark initiative, aiming to cover sections of the city’s ring road with green roofs and new parks that reconnect divided neighbourhoods. Alongside waterfront redevelopments and neighbourhood-scale public space upgrades, Antwerp’s stadsbouwmeester (city architect) oversees design quality. Together, these efforts position Antwerp as a leading site where large-scale infrastructure meets sustainable landscape architecture and resilient urban transformation.
Charleroi
Charleroi, long known as a hub of heavy industry, is today reinventing itself through ambitious post-industrial regeneration. Projects such as the renewal of the Ville Basse (lower town) and the District Créatif (creative district) plan transform abandoned industrial areas into vibrant cultural and ecological spaces, reconnecting residents with their city. New squares, parks, and cycling paths highlight the importance of landscape in shaping resilience. In Charleroi design-led planning and competitions are driving this remarkable shift toward a more inclusive and sustainable urban identity.
Venue: CIVA
CIVA is a museum and archive centre dedicated to landscape architecture and architecture. Unique in its kind in the cultural world, it offers a year-round program exploring the history, evolution, and future of landscape architecture.
Through exhibitions, lectures, publications and research initiatives, CIVA positions landscape architecture as a powerful lens to examine today’s urban and environmental challenges—and to imagine innovative solutions for the future.
As home to Belgium’s largest collection of landscape architecture archives, CIVA serves as a vital resource for researchers, professionals, and the public. Since 2008, it has also been the official archival repository of the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA).
