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Europe's land and soil face a number of pressures, including urban expansion, contamination from agriculture and industry, soil sealing, landscape fragmentation, low crop diversity, soil erosion and extreme weather events linked to climate change. Greener cities with cleaner energy and transport systems, a green infrastructure connecting green areas, less intensive sustainable agricultural practices can help make Europe's land use more sustainable and soils healthier.
This interactive viewer shows land recycling status and change accounts for major European Functional Urban Areas (FUAs). Land recycling addresses the reuse of abandoned, vacant or underused urban land for new developments. Land recycling is considered a response to land take within FUAs, i.e. urban development on arable land, permanent crop land or semi-natural areas. It is a key planning instrument for achieving the goal of no net land take by 2050 (EC, 2016).
The boxplot shows land recycling as percentage of total land consumption for the period 2006-2012.
Land recycling is still low in all European countries: on average, land recycling accounted for only 13.5 % of total land consumption in European cities in the 2006-2012 period. The land use densification process, i.e. when land development makes maximum use of existing infrastructure, accounts for the largest proportion of land recycling. However, in most countries, land take dominates over densification in total land management with the exception of Finland and France. Grey recycling, i.e. internal conversions between residential and/or non-residential land cover types, is secondary to densification, ranging from 14 % to less than 1 % of total land consumption. Land take predominates over grey recycling in total land management in all countries. Green recycling, i.e. the development of green urban areas using previously built-up areas, is an important trend that reverses soil sealing, but it is a marginal process in all countries and, on average, it accounts for only 0.2 % of total land consumption.
Land recycling addresses the reuse of abandoned, vacant or underused urban land for new developments within FUAs (Functional Urban Areas, i.e. urban agglomerations). Land recycling is considered a response to land take within FUAs, i.e. urban development on arable land, permanent crop land or semi-natural areas. It is a key planning instrument for achieving the goal of no net land take by 2050 (EC, 2016).
For references, please go to https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/find/global or scan the QR code.
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