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One decade is an important period in one’s life, and even more so in the life of an organisation. In 10 years, while Europe became a continent struggling with wars, rising life costs, energy insecurity and inequality, we grew from a small initiative into an organisation present in three European capitals, working with hundreds of municipalities, universities, NGOs and companies across Europe. Our work in these past years is by no means disconnected from what surrounds us: with just cities in mind, we created and supported fair urban transformation processes while keeping our spirit open for new ways of building local cooperation networks, through initiating energy communities, circular neighborhoods and responsible forms of tourism.
With our three branches in Rome, Vienna and Budapest, we have worked on over 30 projects over the past 10 years, all of which actively work towards realising just cities. Our roles in these processes include research, participatory design, communication, policy analysis, knowledge transfer and capacity-building.
Looking forward to 2026, we see affordable housing as central to a just city, and because community-driven cooperative ownership—not speculative investment—must guide this work with strong public-sector involvement, Eutropian will focus on developing co-housing cooperatives, affordable rental schemes and Community Land Trust models across Europe.
2016 – Reviving Markets. Projections suggest that urban areas will be responsible for 80% of global food consumption within the next few years. Reviving markets plays an important function in just food policy for our cities as well as local urban regeneration through their role as public spaces.
We believe that coalescing around the material needs of communities, these underused spaces can return to being fertile grounds for congregating and exchange — with opportunities for positive effects outside of markets themselves. Reviving markets, by centering local needs and engaging with local diverse actors, is an excellent example of Eutropian’s holistic approach model which guides our work.
Our involvement led to a book, Il Rilancio dei Mercati: spazio pubblico, servizi comunitari ed economia circolare, paper, Food markets’ network as an infrastructure for local development in Rome, as well as a series of articles on food systems and markets.
2017 – Funding the Cooperative City. As a result of the 2008 economic crisis, civic initiatives have stepped in as public services and spaces faced austerity, financialisation, and reduced municipal support. Emerging from unemployment, solidarity networks, and changing property markets, these initiatives have developed new forms of self-organisation in work, culture, and welfare.
In that period, as we met inspiring initiatives experimenting with non-speculative real estate development, we began to advocate for cooperative ownership and community-led processes to interrupt speculative dynamics while embedding services into local economies.
Building on this experience, we published Eutropian’s first book Funding the Cooperative City, alongside filming videos, organising workshops, and visiting case studies across European cities, highlighting tools and models that municipalities, institutions, and local actors can use to support more inclusive and resilient urban development.
Cooperative City Magazine was our first major venture into documenting inclusive urban processes and remains our flagship platform. It shares grounded stories of collaborative urban development from across Europe, collected through years of on-site visits and interviews, making it a leading source on practices that shape more inclusive and resilient cities.
2018 – Environmental justice – Circular Economy and Nature Based Solutions are ways forward in creating social and environmental justice. A circular model breaks with today’s linear economy that puts pressure on the Earth’s resources, and nature-based solutions work with ecological processes to tackle urban challenges, linking environmental repair with social benefit.
Eutropian has worked towards establishing circular mechanisms in various urban environments and sectors, in which waste and byproducts become resources for new cycles of production and community use. Through Urban Soil 4 Food, organic waste was converted into fertile soil, feeding community gardens and urban food systems. With GOCCIA, nature-based solutions use soil–plant interactions to clean contamination and bring polluted land back into community use. These projects show how waste can be revaluated and degraded sites turned into living public spaces.
We believe that environmental and social justice must be a key factor in green or sustainable solutions which aim to curb climate change.
2019 – Deliberative democracy With the rise of the populist right, we see how democracy and citizen participation have fallen into crisis across Europe, with increasing abstentionism at elections as well as polarised discussion across social media.
At Eutropian, we believe that deliberative democracy, based on direct participation and discussion in decision-making, can counter these tendencies. Our work moves across both bottom-up and top-down approaches, bridging grassroots initiatives with institutional frameworks to create governance models that are both inclusive and effective. With extensive experience in this bridging role, we aim to make deliberative democracy a driving force for social change and equitable urban development across Europe.
For this reason, through our research on deliberative democracy and resources such as the EUARENAS Toolbox of Experimental Participatory Methods, we have showcases how collective decision-making can be strengthened, translating community knowledge into policy innovation, while also ensuring that institutional commitments provide lasting support for local action.
2020 – Public Space has become an epicentre of fear during the Covid pandemic, with people abandoning all places of encounter. We believe it is essential to redefine public space as a realm of inclusion and a means to mitigate urban conflicts. At Eutropian, we aim to create projects that not only enhance public spaces but also ensure that they are accessible and beneficial to all, offering a transformative vision for more just and vibrant cities.
For this reason, during the Covid-19 quarantine we started exploring the digital public space, beyond our experience in placemaking and temporary use.
Through webinars and videos, we continued to critically engage with community-focused initiatives that enliven and foster inclusive and equitable spaces. The conviction that placemaking must respond to local and community needs in order to shepherd positive, community-oriented change, is embedded in our two projects InclusiveCity and PlaceCity, which both envision placemaking and public spaces as tools for urban regeneration and development.
2021 – The Power of Civic Ecosystems is the relational strength that communities and civic networks can build in order to overcome their challenges.
At Eutropian we believe that civic ecosystems can grow from both shared resources and vibrant neighbourhood connections, providing pathways for more inclusive and resilient urban futures.
Back in 2021 we published The Power of Civic Ecosystems, a book which explores methods and practices of building stronger local cooperation networks around community spaces and resources.
Neighbourhood ecosystems were at the heart of CUP4Creativity in Újbuda, Budapest, where cultural venues, participatory tools, and digital platforms have been co-created to strengthen the local cultural fabric, while our GOOD CITIES project illustrates the potential of the sharing economy by helping municipalities and communities co-design systems for sharing goods. Book link
2022 – Heritage is key for building collective identities but it is also instrumentalised for exclusion and conflict.
At Eutropian, we see heritage as a crucial component of our individual and collective identities, communities and social infrastructure, as well as our urban and rural fabrics. We believe that the community-driven reuse of heritage spaces can be an opportunity for creating more cohesive and inclusive societies.
Through the Open Heritage project, we collected best practices, built a capacity building course and published the book Open Heritage: Community-Driven Adaptive Reuse in Europe about this experience. This project sought to reposition abandoned or underused cultural heritage sites not as challenges for the public, private and civic sectors, but rather as assets and major opportunities.
Additionally, we contributed to the AGORA project which recontextualised unused and underutilised heritage sites in the Danube region as assets ripe for regeneration.
2023 The energy transition has become a crucial social and environmental and challenge in Europe, especially in the wake of rising inequality and geopolitical tensions due to the Russia–Ukraine war.
For this reason, we see energy communities and Positive Energy Districts with an increasingly important role in shaping fair and resilient local energy systems. At Eutropian, we understand energy not only as an infrastructural system but as a commons shaped by cooperation, trust, and collective agency.
Placing communities at the centre of emerging energy models is essential if the transition is to remain just, inclusive and locally grounded. In ENERGY4ALL, we explore how human dynamics, shared governance and collaboration shape Positive Energy Districts and energy communities, developing participatory practices across industrial and civic settings. Co-PED investigates the potential of social and cultural centers as catalysts for positive energy districts, nurturing a just energy transition that includes local communities. Our publication Exploring the Just Transition identifies the opportunities available to cities and the strategies that could effectively enhance their collective influence in promoting a just transition across Europe.
2024 Social cohesion. The notion of security has increasingly entered European public debates, often reduced to surveillance, policing and control.
At Eutropian, we believe this securitarian approach does not address the roots of urban conflicts. Instead, we see social cohesion — built through shared spaces, everyday interactions and inclusive local infrastructures — as essential to creating safer and more resilient cities.
Through 2Nite, we work to strengthen nighttime safety by revitalising public spaces and fostering the social ties that make people feel protected and included. The project emphasises social inclusion, local stakeholder engagement and community-driven policies, ensuring that diverse voices shape both planning and placemaking. This also brings gender equality consciously and consistently into urban design.
Similarly, we’ re involved in the neighbourhood of Quarticciolo in Rome, where residents are actively rejecting top-down securitarian approaches. Together, they promote a model of safety rooted in education, sport and sustainable development — demonstrating how community-led initiatives can cultivate trust, reduce conflict and build long-term cohesion.
2025 Mass tourism. has long been a major challenge in Europe, putting pressure on cities and communities across the continent, leading to growing resentment recently made visible by images of Spanish residents using water guns in protest against tourists. This backlash is driven by skyrocketing housing costs caused by short-term rentals, overcrowded streets, changing neighbourhood services, and the proliferation of low-wage, temporary tourism jobs. In the past years, we have explored a series of initiatives seeking to confront the extractive nature of mass tourism by developing tourism services that can channel revenues into socially meaningful initiatives.
At Eutropian, we see these challenges and experiments as an opportunity to advance sustainable tourism.
Through initiatives like FOOTPRINTS in Ravenna, which invites visitors to become temporary citizens immersed in local culture, and EPIC in Prato, which reimagines the city’s historic textile industry as a tourist attraction, we contribute to developing innovative approaches that help tourists make responsible choices. By strengthening social and solidarity-economy practices in tourism, cities can guide visitors toward more responsible and sustainable decisions.