GreeNexUS: Green-health-safety Nexus for new Urban Spaces

In our increasingly anthropised planet, many cities are facing multiple societal and environmental challenges and the link between the characteristics of the urban green contexts and people’s health and safety represents an emerging topic and of urgent importance. Air pollution and urban climate, reduced contact with nature, limited access to quality green spaces, and urban fabrics and infrastructure that discourage sustainable&safe mobility and active lifestyles, are threatening the mental and physical well-being of an aging society and increasing its social disparities. The GreeNexUS project proposes a novel and multidisciplinary approach to promote urban greening, territorial regeneration and safety/accessibility/walkability of urban infrastructures, as key strategies to face those challenges, while addressing climate change and preventing pandemics from exacerbating inequalities in disadvantaged/vulnerable groups. The GreeNexUS participants (20 institutions from 9 European countries) are joining forces to offer a collaborative Training-through-Research programme involving universities, research centres, companies, NGOs, and local authorities that share this new vision of fostering greener, healthier and safer urban realms of Europe’s cities and towns. This will drive the GreeNexUS process to train specialists, whose cutting-edge and intersectoral expertise will be developed and managed through a challenging general programme of training that combines and integrates the various fields of innovative knowledge of the GreeNexUS’ participants, and also includes career planning, entrepreneurship and soft skills training. In terms of research, 10 specific and multidisciplinary topics will be addressed by 10 Doctoral Candidates, who are envisaged to spread the GreeNexUS approach beyond the project’s scope and duration, under the guidance of a supervisory group of academic and non-academic experts.