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Land and soil in Europe — Ever-sprawling urban concrete?

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Article Published 30 Sep 2019 Last modified 29 Aug 2023

8 min read

Photo: © Susanne Kuijpers, Environment&Me /EEA

Europe’s landscape is changing. Cities and their infrastructures are expanding into productive agricultural land, cutting the landscape into smaller patches, affecting wildlife and ecosystems. In addition to landscape fragmentation, soil and land face a number of other threats: contamination, erosion, compaction, sealing, degradation and even abandonment. What if we could recycle the land already taken by cities and urban infrastructure instead of taking agricultural land?