Regenerating Places, Reimagining Futures
International Conference on Investing in Heritage Revitalisation in the Danube Region
Small and medium-sized towns across the Danube Region are facing a complex set of structural challenges linked to industrial decline, accelerated demographic shifts, economic restructuring, and limited administrative and financial capacity. In many of these communities, former industrial sites – once the backbone of local prosperity – now stand as brownfields or underused assets, representing missed opportunities for economic diversification and the reactivation of local identity and community life.
Iskriva Institute, together with Make Better, and the Municipality of Resita, is a proud co-organizer of the international conference on investing in heritage revitalization in the Danube region:
“Regenerating Places, Reimagining Futures,”
which will take place from April 23–25, 2026, in Reșița, Romania.
The conference will be held in English.
The event builds on the successful example of the conference Co-creating Future Heritage: From Industrial Past to Future Horizons from November 2025 at the Old Ironworks in Ravne na Koroškem.
Why attend?
01 – Meet peers from similar cities across the Danube Region Connect with mayors, planners, impact investors, heritage practitioners and civil society leaders from small and medium-sized towns navigating industrial restructuring and demographic change. Rare, candid exchange – practitioner to practitioner, beyond the conference room.
02 – Explore live sites of transformation, otherwise not open to the public Gain exclusive access to sites in active transformation: from brownfields being redeveloped into new mixed-use districts and industrial parks, to landmark heritage structures undergoing adaptive re-use. See real decisions being made, in real places, in real time.
03 – Discuss investments & financing for regeneration Dedicated sessions on unlocking funding and capital for post-industrial projects: EU instruments (ITI, Just Transition, NEB framework), impact investment, blended finance and strategies for attracting private capital to brownfield and heritage regeneration.
The event is organised in the framework of cooperation between Interreg Danube projects ReInd-BBG: Reindustrialisation following the Brownfield is better than Greenfield Principle and NONA – New Governance for New Spaces, supported by the Interreg Danube Region Programme co-funded by the European Union
