In Tartu, the ClimaGen project focuses on improving the quality, functionality and climate resilience of existing green spaces in the Annelinn neighbourhood, a dense modernist mass-produced residential district (mikrorayon) developed in the late 1970s–1980s. The project responds to ageing and deteriorating public and recreational infrastructure, monotonous low-biodiversity lawns, fragmented land ownership, low resident engagement, overheating and local flooding issues. Rather than creating entirely new green areas, ClimaGen aims to enhance existing outdoor spaces through place-based re-greening, nature-based solutions, community involvement and data-driven planning.
A key lesson underpinning Tartu’s approach is that meaningful climate action must begin with people and their everyday needs, rather than with climate targets alone. Residents are primarily concerned with the quality of their daily living environment: attractive and safe public spaces, opportunities for recreation and social interaction, places for children and young people, shade during hot summer days, and comfortable outdoor areas close to home. For this reason, the project begins by listening to local residents, identifying their needs, challenges, and aspirations, and building a relationship of trust before setting focus on broader climate and environmental objectives. Community interviews, workshops, and thorough and methodologically sound co-creation activities provide the foundation for this process.
After a shared understanding of local needs and challenges has been established, climate and environmental considerations are introduced incrementally. The re-naturing portfolio combines public re-greening demonstrators around the central pedestrian walkway and Annelinn library, community green nudges for residential courtyards and private or semi-public properties, and green-blue connectors that link fragmented green spaces. Together, these measures introduce tree planting, pollinator-friendly vegetation, stormwater swales, infiltration elements, natural play features, seating, artistic interventions and multifunctional stormwater retention landscapes. A central objective of ClimaGen in Tartu is therefore not the creation of entirely new green areas, but the enhancement of the quality, usability, and climate resilience of existing green spaces.
Beyond its local impact, ClimaGen serves as a living laboratory for developing and testing new approaches to climate-resilient urban regeneration. The project seeks to demonstrate that sustainable urban transformation is most successful when it is created with residents rather than for them. By placing trust-building, participation, and co-creation at the heart of the process, Tartu is working to ensure that climate resilience becomes not only an environmental objective but also a pathway towards healthier, more vibrant, and more inclusive neighbourhoods. The Tartu pilot has high replicability because Annelinn is representative of many Soviet occupation era large housing estates and modernist panel-building neighbourhoods in Estonia and across post-Soviet Europe, where fragmented ownership, ageing infrastructure, underused public space, heat stress, stormwater challenges and biodiversity loss are common. By recalibrating the approach with local land-cover data, cadastral information, topography, biodiversity observations and community input, other modernist neighbourhoods can develop evidence-based, socially grounded and spatially realistic re-greening strategies.
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