Policies, Strategies, and Projects for Sustainable Urban Regeneration. A comparative analysis of France and Germany

The crisis in today's cities, unlike the one that originated in the second half of the last century, is characterized by the emergence of environmental issues related to the climate crisis, which compound the already existing structural socio-economic challenges. This widespread fragility makes it necessary – now more than ever – to adopt an integrated approach to urban regeneration that considers the public city as a reference structure. This approach aligns significantly with EU policies promoting sustainability and city efficiency. Moreover, it constitutes a cross-cutting goal within the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR, 2021). Indeed, Mission 5 “Inclusion and Cohesion” (focusing on Urban Regeneration and Social Housing) aims to renovate deteriorated areas, prioritizing green innovation and sustainability. Within this framework, the contribution proposes a comparative analysis of the policies undertaken by France and Germany in the field of urban regeneration oriented towards an ecological-environmental approach. This analysis has a dual purpose: to construct an interpretative framework useful for contextualizing policies, guidelines, and procedures in the European context, and to investigate the design impacts of these policies on the territory through the analysis of some urban regeneration best practices in the analysed countries.