Walking the innovation path with Solange Mifsud

The NEB journey brings together the City of Banská Bystrica (SK), and the regions of Coimbra (PT), Zasavje (SI), Tuscany (IT), Västerbotten (SE), Centre-Val de Loire (FR), and Asturias (ES), working to translate the NEB values – sustainability, aesthetics, and inclusion – into concrete territorial solutions, from rural regeneration to urban co-design processes.

The New European Bauhaus sits at the crossroads of design, sustainability, and social inclusion. In practice, how do they translate into specific challenges that territories need to address?

Using NEB principles, regions redesign the built environment to achieve climate neutral, circular and regenerative performance (such as carbon-value engineering) to identify, evaluate and implement sustainable design alternatives. The regions also embed nature-based and green-infrastructure solutions that restore biodiversity, improve indoor and outdoor health, and integrate renewable energy and water-saving systems. 

Another major challenge is guaranteeing affordable, universally accessible housing and public spaces. Regions addressing that challenge should implement the NEB principle of inclusion by co-creating designs that leave no one behind. In other words, they need to ensure accessibility, cultural relevance and instill a sense of belonging. Governance and financing tools should be part of the policy mix, including multi-level governance, and the use of tools such as regulatory sandboxes and the Open Discovery Process (ODP). 

The New European Bauhaus is often described as a cultural project, but it also has strong links to the EU's green and cohesion policy agendas. How do the territories you work with connect NEB to broader competitiveness and resilience goals for their region?

Regions within the NEB experimentation journey understand that NEB is about converting elements, which at first glance seem to evolve around art and culture into impactful actions for a better lifestyle, regional competitiveness and resilience. 

In the case of the experimentation journey, regions co-create place-based blueprints that embed the NEB values of sustainability, inclusivity and beauty into transformative innovation policies. These blueprints use transformative innovative tools from regulatory sandboxes to cultural heritage-led designs that stimulate new business models and attract talent and skilled labour. The broader EU policy ecosystem reinforces these elements by linking NEB to green and digital agendas. Combined, these multi-level approaches raise the quality and carbon performance on the ground and enhance the market appeal of local products and services while generating green sustainable actions.

For instance, through NEB experimentation journey Asturias is co-designing a model of rural revitalization that integrates environmental sustainability, social innovation and local economic development. Asturias is focusing on combining ecological restoration, low‑carbon energy and circular‑resource management with inclusive rural regeneration. The funding sources of these actions are EU programmes, notably the Common Agricultural Policy, the LEADER rural development fund and NextGenerationEU. 

Another case in point is illustrated through the dedicated efforts and commitment of the city of Banská Bystrica in the NEB experimentation journey where it is co-designing the city as an innovative educational hub for the knowledge and digital economy, and developing a new model for integrated multistakeholder governance, financing and sustainability. 

The NEB experimentation journey is a space for inspiration and action where regions discuss and exchange blueprints, feed their regional strategies by formulating, testing, and scaling the interventions best suited for their needs. This makes them in a better position to link the cultural ambition of the NEB with the EU’s green and cohesion policy goals, that in turn make the territories more resilient to future shocks.

NEB places a strong emphasis on co-creation and including communities that are often left out of design and planning processes. Does a place-based approach help ensure that the benefits of territorial transformation are distributed fairly? How do you ensure that no territory, and no community within a territory, is left behind?

A place‑based approach is at the heart of the NEB’s co‑creation methodology because it encourages each territory to map its own social‑spatial fabric, involve citizens in discussions, including those that historically might have been excluded from planning. The NEB experimentation journey, through its emphasis on the place-based dimension, guides regions to develop a Theory of Change and a regional blueprint that embeds tangible actions and plan their roll-out through flexibilities that provide for adjustments according to community feedback. These concrete and ambitious regional actions aim for projects that demonstrably improve accessibility, affordable housing and implement nature‑based solutions in peripheral or underserved neighbourhoods to increase their resilience. 

For example, let’s look at the case of Centre-Val de Loire where through its participation in the NEB experimentation journey, it is working on a tangible place-based challenge to transform practices of cohabiting in the region. Centre-Val de Loire is putting efforts and resources to promote good living, generate new spatial qualities, and preserve spaces for all within the territory. 

In fact, the NEB values explicitly call for accessible, transparent, affordable, socially and geographically fair and inclusive solutions. By coupling these locally tailored co‑creation designs and actions with EU‑wide key priorities and assisted by the different EU funding streams, territories can guarantee that no community is left behind, turning the cultural ambition of the NEB into a concrete, fair share territorial transformation. 

Solange, what transformative tools are territories putting to action to address their localized challenges in the NEB experimentation journey? 

The regional participants in the NEB experimentation journey translate their local challenges into action mostly by deploying the useful tool of the Open Discovery Process (ODP), by engaging through multi‑level governance and/or exploring possibilities through regulatory sandboxing. These tools are complemented by working on a theory of change drawn for a particular challenge. The theory of change acts as a regional blueprint and an actionable implementation plan co‑created with diverse stakeholders at the local level. 

The ODP enables each region to map place‑based needs, capture diverse ideas and build a shared understanding of sustainability, inclusivity and beauty. For example, Tuscany being a pioneer of this tool puts emphasis on a Design for All approach, which has been adopted and promoted by 'Toscana Accessibile'. The underlying concept is that it integrates all the three dimensions of NEB Compass to carry out meaningful, beautiful experiences and sustainable interventions to foster Tuscany’s citizens democratic participation within the context that they inhabit. 

Multi‑level governance links municipal, regional, national and EU actors to align policies, funding streams, including Cohesion Policy and the Just Transition Fund, and the broader green and digital agendas. Looking at the work that the region of Zasavje is championing through its orchestration of stakeholders in the planning process, together with a well-crafted multilevel governance, are triggering a regional laboratory for regenerative transformation. 

Last but not least, regulatory sandboxes provide a controlled space where regulatory experimentations could take place, such as in the case of the rural area in Asturias, to assist innovative approaches to be rapidly integrated into territorial development strategies.