What is it about?
Sustainable urban and regional innovation through temporary installations is a more and more visible process in the neoliberal city. Recent literature on urban and regional innovation could launch different solutions aimed at bringing profit to local administration by promoting natural environment in the most visible and representative tourist spaces of the city. Our study advances these debates by critically presenting the role of an innovative sustainable and ecologically friendly practice contributing to a European Capital of Culture (ECoC) and how a five-store plant installation was temporarily placed in the city center with the aim for Timisoara to convey a strong message about urban (bio)diversity as an identifying element of Timișoara as a tourist center and the ecosystem services that it brings to society.
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Photo by Rifat Ahmed Ritul on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Our study is important because this site was the most visited attraction in Timisoara and in Timis county in 2023, but it caused divergent opinions among the local communities. Although meant as impactful beyond the locals, as well for the tourism in terms of revitalizing local urban and regional tourism, our findings suggest that the plant installation engendered important critiques on its integration in urban and regional landscape, heritage co-creation and collective care of Timisoara’s heritage sites.
Perspectives
We conclude that the cultural and innovative ecosystem practice of temporarily placing the plant installation in the heritage city area has brought both positive and negative consequences at local urban and regional levels: it was a unique site with increased biodiversity, communities engagement and visibility for the city on European visitors, but it also not suited to the place of the heritage landscape of the city center.
Dr Remus Cretan
west university of Timisoara
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Community Perception on a Temporary Plant Nursury Installation: Urban and Regional Tourism Perspectives, Regional Science Policy & Practice, September 2025, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.rspp.2025.100251.
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