Towards No Net Land Take in cities: insights from the PlanningMatters 2025 webinar series

In 2024, following the Belgian presidency of the European Union, Perspective launched a new European platform for urban planning agencies, called PlanningMatters. In 2024, within the framework of this platform, five webinars were organised, dedicated to the implementation of “no net land take” (NNLT) strategies in European cities, metropolitan areas, and regions.

These webinars brought together experts, planners, and urban designers from across Europe around a shared objective: identify the public policies and planning tools can help achieve the European goal of no net land take by 2050. Differen paths were explored: promoting urban regeneration, qualitative density, and the revalorisation of existing land.

The discussions led to several key recommendations to the EU, focusing on

• governance
• financing models
• knowledge-sharing

Achieving the NNLT objective by 2050 requires a coherent policy framework, appropriate economic and policy tools, sustainable urban models, and robust data and monitoring for informed decision-making.

Through this series of webinars, Perspective and the members of the PlanningMatters platform have contributed to the European debate on the transition towards territorial development that prioritises the reduction, compensation, and reuse of already urbanised land rather than the consumption of new land.

The conclusions drawn from these exchanges allow a stronger cooperation among European cities and contribute to future discussions on the next EU programming period for sustainable urban development. The conclusions are now availble in one document: « A journey to no net land take : PlanningMatters webinars series highlights ».