Welcome to the web page of IURS

About IURS

Institut pro udržitelný rozvoj sídel o.s. / Institute for Sustainable Development of Settlements

IURS is a non-profit Civic Association registered under the Czech law, founded in 2001. The aims of IURS are to support sustainable urban development and to help a wide variety of local stakeholders to understand and follow its principles. IURS advocacy and expert work is instrumental in improving aspects of local policy and legal framework related to sustainable land use. By its structure and its way of working, IURS fills the niche gap between the academic research and the commercial consulting activities. IURS is most effective in areas, where it is advocating new approaches how to deliver sustainable urban development and also in areas, where the commercial consulting is yet underdeveloped or too risky.

 

Presently, IURS has 32 members, specialist in various professions (development, real estate, demography, urban design, urban transport, planning and architecture, construction economy, law, urban regeneration, environmental remediation, and so on) whose experience can be drawn on or employed when working on local or international projects.

 

IURS activities

Over the years IURS has gained an experience in urban issues not only at local, regional and national level, but also at international level. In a broader Central European context, IURS has been involved in several networks and research projects concerning brownfields expertise. In the future, we would like to increase our involvement in an exchange of international experiences focusing on promotion and deliverance of sustainable urban development.

IURS activities at national level address three main issues:

• advocacy and support of brownfields regeneration,

• advocacy and support of sustainable urban development policies,

• drawing attention to missing sustainable development skills.

At regional level activities focus on:

• integration of regional development policies and investments following objectives of sustainable development,

• support of selected issues at regional development and its legal and governance aspects.

At local level we concentrate on:

• direct development and procurement advice (in particular to local authorities),

• delivery of sustainable development training to all those who need it.

 

Brownfields

Promotion of brownfields reuse was the first issue of the sustainable urban development that IURS approached and then quickly established its expert and advocacy reputation. Through this work, a considerable progress was achieved in the Czech Republic resulting in an inclusion of brownfields in the context of national priorities, in identification and visualization of brownfields and in promotion of their reuse. For number of years IURS has continued as a service to public providing main national information source related to the Czech brownfields ‘know-how’. On its webpage www.brownfields.cz, the information is divided to all the 3 levels of accessibility:

• general public,

• local government,

• national policy makers.

By creating this English web page IURS wants to address international readers and share its brownfields expertises and papers written by IURS members in English. IURS would welcome joining projects, which would allow a transfer of its brownfields expertise and its ‘know-how’ to other Central and East European countries.

 

Sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles

Over the last 5 years IURS has been building up an expertise related to advocating sustainable development, especially sustainable land use and sustainable construction. IURS has been involved in national discussions on urban sprawl and has been appointed as an expert in several other working groups. Last year IURS has gained expertise in evaluating sustainability of land use, in the line with new Czech planning law requirements.

Due to the low level of promotion of sustainable development to the local people, IURS developed products promoting sustainable development and sustainable life styles, which are targeted to general public. Currently IURS has also been involved in a campaign promoting sustainable lifestyles. IURS would welcome involvement and partnering international projects, which intend to develop campaigns promoting sustainable life styles sustainable land use or sustainable development.

 

Integrated Urban Regeneration

Integrated Urban Regeneration is a complex activity reflecting social, economic and environmental impacts caused by development activities. IURS believes that regeneration based on project-to-project experience, without any integrated approach is not a long-time and sustainable solution and is therefore heavily advocating at the national and regional level for integrated urban development approaches. As a result of these activities, there are embedded the Integrated Urban Regeneration Programs in all of the current Regional Operation Programmes of the EU structural funds. They are conditional for larger cities to gain access to the EU funding.

The main leaders in the integrated urban regeneration are usually local authorities. Their initiative, knowledge and skills are for any integrated urban regeneration essential. For this reason, IURS focuses on enhancements of the local authorities’ skills and on training and help by means of consultations. IURS is looking for participation on international projects, dealing with enhancing local authorities’ development and sustainable development skills by providing an active training.

Integrated regional strategies

IURS believes that sustainable regional development can only be delivered effectively, when an integration of various development related policies is in place. Furthermore, a high leverage of private money supplementing public key investments significantly helps the delivery. Prerequisite conditions for such sustainable regional development, as IURS sees it, are:

• wide political supports,

• focus on sustainable development strategies,

• broad partnership between public and private institutions,

• new forms of governance which can cohere sustainable development policies over individual communities jurisdictions.

IURS intends to step into consulting and enabling private and public stakeholders involved in these processes. To increase the skills of actors in this area, IURS is looking to enter projects dealing with regional policy integration and metropolitan governance issues. IURS intention here is to reap the international experience in developing trainings and enabling packages for the local decision makers and the key stakeholders.

 

IURS papers and documents in English  

Here you may find IURS members papers and documents written in English:

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

IURS Contact

IURS – Institut pro udržitelný rozvij sídel o.s.

V Babyku 843/4, 193 00, Czech Republic

tel.: +420 271 724 572

info@iurs.cz

www.iurs.cz

www.brownfields.cz

 

IURS Projects

PROJECT NAME	OBJECTIVE	ROLE/ PROGRAM	TIME PERIOD

 

IURS Partners

PARTNERS CONTACT		Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania, linas.kliucininkas@ktu.lt Rezekne Higher Education Institution, Latvia, edmunds@ru.lv SIA design s.r.o., Czech Republic, www.siadesigncz.com Město Jilemnice, Czech Republic, www.jilemnice.cz VŠB-TU, FS, Ostrava, Czech Republic, www.vsb.cz ČKAIT – Česká komora autorizovaných inženýrů a techniků, Prague, Czech Republic  www.ckait.cz CzechInvest, Prague, Czech Republic   www.czechinvest.cz PPP centre, Czech Republic www.pppcentre.cz DHV CR spol. s.r.o, Czech Republic www.dhv.cz DZT Praha, Czech Republic www.dtz.com Statutární město Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic, www.usti-nad-labem.cz Mott McDonald, www.mottmac.cz IREAS,Institut pro strukturální politiku o.p.s., Czech Republic, www.ireas.cz MEPCO spol, s.r.o,, www.smocr.cz NSZM – Národní sit´ zdravých měst, Czech Republic www.nszm.cz Masarykova Universita, Fakulta regionalistiky, Brno, Czech Republic www.reg.muni.cz CTU, Stavební fakulta, Prague, Czech Republic   www.fst.cvut.cz Minis­terstvo životního prostředí, www.env.cz Statutární město Hradec Králové, Czech Republic, www.hradeckralove.org Ústecký kraj, Czech Republic, www.kr-ustecky.cz, SKB Gouda, www.cur.nl CODECO a.s, www.codeco.cz Středočeský kraj, www.kr-stredocesky.cz Město Brno, www.brno.cz Městká část Praha 9, www.praha9.cz Mikroregion Hranicko, www.mikroregion-hranicko.cz Naučné středisko ekologické výchovy-Čabárna o.p.s, www.nsev-kladno.cz ZO ČSOP Polabí, www.polabske-ekocentrum.cz Arnika o.s, www.arnika.org ITDP New York www.itdp.org ITDP Europe, www.itdp-europe.org SKSI- Slovak Chamber of Civil Engineers, Slovak Republic www.sksi.sl SPECTRA, FA, Slovenská technická Universita Bratislava, Slovak Republic www.fa.stuba.sk Projektgruppe Stadt+Entwicklung, Germany www.projektstadt.de Hamburg University, Germany DIFU, Germany SFZ-sekretariat for future studies Berlin, Germany www.sfz.de SFZ-sekretariat for future studies Dortmund, Germany www.sfz.de IRS – Institute for Regional Development and Structural Planning, www.irs-net.de EA.UE-European Academy of Urban Environment, Berlin, Germany  www.eaue.de Department of Spatial Planning in Europe at Dortmund University, Germany  www.raumplanung.uni-dortmund.de/erp BBR-Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning, Bon, Germany  www.bbr.bund.de Technische Universität Berlin, Institut für Land- und Seeverkehr Fachgebiet Integrierte Verkehrsplanung, Germany  www.verkehrsplanung.tu-berlin.de CL:AIRE, Conta­minated Land: Applications in Real Environment,TNO Environment, Energy and Process Innovation Apeldoorn, www.mep.tno.nl BRGM, OVAM, Public Waste Agency of Flanders Mechelen, www.ovam.be R3 Environmental Technology Ltd, www.r3environmental.co.uk Universität Stuttgart, Institut für Wasserbau; VEGAS, www.iws.uni-stuttgart.de Fachhochschule Nordostnieder­sachsen, Dept. of Civil Eng. Water and Environ.Manage­ment, www.fhnon.de Bundesministerium für Land-und Forstwirtschaft, Umwelt und Wasserwirtschaf­t,ADEME Angers, DEKONTA a.s., www.dekonta.cz Umweltbundesamt, II 4.3 Terrestrial Ecology, Land Management, Regional Protection Concepts, www.uba.de Centre for Regional Science at the Technical University Vienna, www.tuwien.cz Humbolt University, Berlin UBA, Austrian Federal Environment Agency, www.umweltbundesamt.atwww.claire.co.ukwww.brgm.fr Politechnika Slazska,Wydział Budownictwa, Poland Szczecizskie Centrum Renowacyjne Sp. z o. o., Poland IRM – Institute for Urban Development Krakow, Poland www.irm.pl Centre for European Regional and Local Studies, Warsaw, Poland  www.euroreg.uw.edu.pl IETU – Institute for Ecology of Industrial Areas, Katowice, Poland www.ietu.katowice.plwww.ademe.fr Palgo Belgrade, Serbia www.palgo.org Stalna konferencija gradova i opština, Belgrade, Serbia www.skgo.org University of Latvia, Faculty of Geography and Earth Sciences Lithuanian Geological Survey, Department of Hydrogeology, www.lgt.lt University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Chem. and Chem. Tech., Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry, www.uni-lj.si Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary www.bme.hu Clean Air action group, Budapest, Hungary www.levego.hu/english/ VATI (national agency), Hungary Centre for European Studies at the Hungarian Academy of Science, Hungary www.rkk.hu University of Nottingham, School of Geography, UK www.notingham.ac.uk Sheffield University, UK University of Bologna, Faculty of Engineering, Dept. of Applied Chemistry and Material Science, Italy  www.unibo.it CVR – Consorzio Venezia Ricerche, Italy www.vegapark.ve.it CNR – IRSA ROMA, Water Research Institute www.irsa.rm.cnr.it UBI CES, University, Portugal