INUA: Awakening Places through Sufficiency-led Community Activation
A new journey with Horizon Europe explores how vacant and underused spaces can become opportunities for more sustainable, inclusive and beautiful communities. The INUA project, launched with its recent kick-off meeting, brings together international partners to rethink how we use the built environment and how regeneration can happen without relying on resource-intensive new construction.
How can we regenerate the places we already have, rather than continually building new ones?
Aligned with the principles of the New European Bauhaus and co-funded by the European Union, INUA will develop innovative tools and co-creative methodologies to assess and unlock the sufficiency potential of existing spaces: reducing resource consumption, extending the life of existing buildings and infrastructure, and making better use of spaces that are already there. Through a Sufficiency Evaluation Framework and a shared Sufficiency Lexicon, the project will develop practical tools to help public authorities and practitioners assess the potential of existing places and identify appropriate interventions.
At the heart of the project is the Digital Neighbourhood Logbook, a digital platform designed to make vacant and underused spaces searchable, comparable and trackable over time. Combining spatial, social and environmental data with scenario modelling and interactive mapping, it will support more informed decisions about how places can be regenerated according to local needs and priorities.
The approach will be tested across five Living Labs in Finland, Greece, Italy, Romania and Slovenia, engaging citizens, professionals and local authorities in the process. The ambition is not simply to fill empty spaces, but to unlock their existing potential while reducing resource demand, extending the life of the built environment and strengthening the quality and resilience of communities.
Within this collaborative framework, LAND will contribute its expertise in Nature-Based Solutions, co-creative methodologies and innovative landscape tools, exploring how sufficiency can be combined with Nature-positive approaches to reconnect people, Nature and the places they inhabit.
The name INUA reflects this vision: a spirit of life flowing through people, nature and places, reminding us that every landscape is living, interconnected and full of potential.
