Sleeping Beauty: Awakening Dormant Places with Nature-Based Solutions

SleepingBeauty is based on the premise that many communities contain places with significant, yet untapped, potential: empty squares, neglected green spaces, and streets that function merely as transit routes. Through co-creation processes involving residents, experts, municipalities, property owners, cultural organisations, and other local stakeholders, the project develops nature-based solutions and other place-development interventions designed to bring these "Sleeping Beauties" back to life. 

The aim is to enhance biodiversity, health and well-being, climate resilience, and social cohesion. Nature-based solutions may include the restoration of wetlands and waterways, tree planting and other greening measures to reduce urban heat island effects, the creation of flowering habitats for pollinators, stormwater management solutions such as rain gardens and open drainage systems, and the development of green meeting places that benefit both people and ecosystems. At the same time, the project seeks to strengthen people's connection to nature and contribute to more attractive and multifunctional public spaces.

Within the project, RISE is responsible for developing frameworks and methods for continuous evaluation and learning. The purpose is to monitor, analyse and compare the impacts of pilot interventions while supporting learning processes at each pilot site.

The evaluation covers topics such as greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, local climate conditions, accessibility and inclusion, local economic development, social cohesion, and health and well-being. Through systematic learning across the pilot sites, RISE aims to identify success factors, barriers and opportunities for transferring and scaling up the project's approaches in other contexts.

RISE also plays a particularly active role in the development work at the Swedish pilot site in Fröseke, Småland. Here, RISE provides methodological support, knowledge development and evaluation in close collaboration with local stakeholders to strengthen the site's ecological, social and cultural values. The pilot activities in Fröseke focus, among other things, on how natural and cultural environments can be developed together to support biodiversity, attractive living environments and long-term local development.

RISE is represented by an interdisciplinary team of project managers, specialists and researchers with expertise in process facilitation, evaluation methodology, place-making and urban design, nature-based solutions, co-creation, governance and leadership, health and well-being, and cultural heritage.