Curitiba in Brazil was recommended by UNESCO as a model for sustainable development.

Thank you. Curitiba was also distinguished as the most innovative City. That is exactly the type of answer I have been hoping for. I had not known about the UNESCO recommendation.

Kind regards from Germany

Thank you, Britta. Kind regards !

Dear Britta,

There are certainly many regeneration projects out there - but then again to fin the outstanding examples of best practice is difficult.

I would advise to include in your search also relevant networks and research projects. Personally, I would recommend the networks CABERNET - http://www.cabernet.org.uk/index.asp?c=1124 and Common Forum - http://www.commonforum.eu/ and NICOLE http://www.nicole.org/ - and e.g. the EU-Projects COBRAMAN http://www.cobraman-ce.eu/ or HOMBRE http://www.zerobrownfields.eu

In particular, the EU co-financed FP7 project TIMBRE - Tailored Improvement for Brownfield Regeneration in Europe - has been setting up a best practices survey: analyses of selected cases studies of successful brownfield regeneration. The data base will be available online soon on http://www.timbre-project.eu - the approach and interesting background information on the selection of cases has been presented in the projects deliverable 3.1 by Frantál et al. ( http://www.timbre-project.eu/tl_files/timbre/Intern/4%20Work%20Packages/WP8/Deliverables/timbre_265364_D3.1_V3.pdf --> see chapter 4).

Furthermore, these papers might be of interest:

Bulkeley 2006 Urban sustainability: learning from best practice? http://www.envplan.com/epa/fulltext/a38/a37300.pdf

Colantonio & Dixon 2011 Urban Regeneration and Social Sustainability: Best Practice from European Cities, Wiley-Blackwell

Punter 2007 Developing Urban Design as Public Policy: Best Practice Principles for Design Review and Development Management

Kind regards,

Stephan

Hi Britta,

Birgit Glock is/was addressing shrinking cities and their policies. She compared Duisburg and Leipzig in Germany. Leipzig achieved some success, Duisburg did not.

Best regards,

Martin

Cara Britta:

Se o seu interesse é o de conhecer áreas urbanas que estão sendo reinventadas, eu sugiro que você conheça o projeto da Nova Cidade Olímpica que está sendo construída no Rio de Janeiro, Brasil Denominado de Porto Maravilha.,ele prevê várias intervenções urbanísticas, restauro, construção de túneis, museus e muito mais

Maiores informações poderão ser encontradas no site http://www.cidadeolimpica.com.br/projetos/porto-maravilha/

Espero ter ajudado!

Andréa

Thank you all for the very valuable hints! Thank you Stephan and Martin, Andréa and Carolina. We really appreciate your helpful answers. Fortunately, our new colleague Julia is a Brazilian, so she can read and translate the recommended Spanish and Portuguese reports.

Best regards and adiós!!

Britta and Barbara

What a broad question. Lots of examples. Rosario in Argentina. Porto Alegre in Brazil. Ilo in Peru. Manizales and Medellin in Colombia. Durban in South Africa.

For Rosario, Ilo, Manizales and Durban, see case studies in Environment and Urbanization http://eau.sagepub.com/ This journal has detailed accounts of innovation in many other cities too. Including a detailed account of Curitiba from 1992 which gives you the background to the innovations. Journal issues from 1989 to 2011 are open access - although so too are 2012 and 2013 until December 9th

I readily admit: It is a broad question. On the other hand there are some good examples that seem to be "common knowledge". Curitiba is one of them. They seem to be always on the list irrespective whether you ask your colleagues or the research gate network. Songpa in Corea has been listed by colleagues in Asia. I will certainly look into Durban. That is a new one.

In my line of work, we are trying to promote energy efficient cities through service innovation, I have been looking for good approaches in other fields of action and in other parts of the world for quite a while. They certainly provide good starting points for innovative ideas and solutions - and encouragement to get a difficult undertaking done.

Kind regards and thank you and everybody else for all the interesting answers. I hope there will be some more.

I'll add a quick list that we discuss in North America:

Community land trusts in Dudley Street Initiative in Boston, Massachusetts USA

Green community visioning, industrial rebirth, and immigrant inclusion in Chattanooga, Tennessee USA

Community organizing and planned population loss in Youngstown, Ohio, USA

Metropolitan regional government, transit, & immigrant neighborhood inclusion in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

Metropolitan sustainability planning in Greater Vancouver, British Columbia, USA

Re-introducing mass rail transit in Greater Los Angeles, California, USA

Introduction of Google Wire with community planning in Kansas City, Missouri

Metropolitan planning and transit oriented development in Metro Washington, DC USA

Reigonalizing assets in municipal bankruptcy in Detroit, Michigan USA

I have started to follow http://eau.sagepub.com/ closely, thank you for David Satterthwaite for pointing it out.

Thank your for naming the US American examples. Pittsburgh is an example always mentioned in Europe when urban governance ist discussed. I had a Chance to visit years recently after 20 and was very impressed.

Kind regards to all of you.