River restoration and blue-green infrastructure in Alba lulia
On 24 and 25 June 2025, the Policy Learning Platform held an onsite peer review for the Municipality of Alba Iulia, which requested advice regarding their policy challenge on river restoration and blue-green infrastructure. The peer review was hosted by the Flemish Land Agency in Leuven and Gent (Belgium), which also offered site visits to get a hands-on understanding of river restoration and blue-green infrastructure in urban, peri-urban and rural contexts.
Peers from across Europe
Alongside Katharina Krell and Astrid Severin, our Thematic Experts for a Greener Europe, five excellent peers participated in the peer review:
- Johan Laeremans, Agricultural Engineer, Vlaamse Landmaatschappij (Belgium)
- Rene Reisner, National Coordinator for the Green Transition, Ministry of Climate (Estonia)
- Mary Molloy, Executive Regional Planner, Southern Regional Assembly (Ireland)
- Ferenc Réder, Strategy Officer, National Development Centre (Hungary)
- Abdulla Diku, Executive Director, PSEDA-ILIRIA, Tirana (Albania)
- Jaime Fagundez, Professor, University of A Coruña (Spain)
Recommendations
The Integrated Urban Development Strategy of Alba Iulia Municipality (SIDU) 2021-2030 is the based on an analysis of local needs and is aligned with European, national and regional strategic frameworks. Amongst the six main objectives of the strategy, Alba Iulia aspires to its status as a Green and Smart City – implementing smart city solutions and reducing carbon emissions.
However, Alba Iulia is facing a complex policy issue concerning its rivers (the Mureș, Ampoi and Sebeș rivers) and waterfronts, which requires attention in several critical areas but also in the quality of green spaces (less than 15sqm /green spaces per inhabitant when the minimum EU regulations require to have at least 26 sqm/inhabitant). The first challenge lies in enhancing the city’s blue infrastructure, as the two rivers, though crossing the city, have not been adequately integrated into the urban environment.
Despite their potential, the rivers remain underutilised, with limited public access, few recreational opportunities, and inadequate attention to their environmental sustainability. Another significant hurdle is the issue of ownership and governance. The land along the rivers and the riverbanks is not owned by the Municipality, making it difficult for the city to plan, develop, or improve these areas.
For the development of better strategies and actions plans fostering river restoration and blue-green-infrastructure as well as improving stakeholder involvement and citizen participation in the renaturalisation measures, the peers recommended the following:
- Know where you want to go, what your strategy is, and your priorities.
- Use an ecological approach for your river restoration plan (recreational purposes are not necessarily compatible with the biodiversity of a river).
- Start behaving as the owner of the territory. e.g., declare part of the riverside a municipal conservation zone. Buy back land from farmers.
- Identify what you want to achieve in each specific river valley.
- Individual measures should be reflected in the river-basin management plans as well as in the local energy and climate plans and can be easily integrated into existing plans.
- Apply appropriate measures, including riverside forests, passive restoration in peri-urban/rural areas, accessible river fronts, renaturalisation, depaving, and blue-green infrastructure measures.
- Understand the driving force/key enabler for better blue-green infrastructure and then communicate it.
- Co-create a strong vision statement underlining the benefits and ecosystem services provided by healthy rivers for the local community.
- Involve the community as a whole to enhance ownership and participation.
- Educate all relevant stakeholders from school pupils to public officials in a practical way, including the use of citizen science and monitoring.
- Make use of EU initiatives to finance river restoration and blue-green infrastructure, as water resilience is high on the European agenda.
The host’s policy challenges, and all the peer suggestions can be found in the follow-up report which will be published shortly.
This peer review has been very inspirational and a real boost for me. It helped us to think out of the box and has completely changed the way we think about river restoration.
Crina Dumitrescu - Programs Director, Alba Iulia Municipality
I am pleasantly surprised to witness the importance that is given to nature and to see that blue-green infrastructure is not just about construction. That truly changed my mind.
Valentin Onisoru - Urbanist, Alba Iulia Municipality
Before the peer review, we did not know what we know. Now it is very clear and we do not have any open questions. This exchange enables us to create good river restoration projects in the future.
Anamaria Luca - Project Manager Councillor, Alba Iulia Municipality