NONA – New Governance for New Spaces
NONA – New Governance for New Spaces (January 2024 – June 2026) is an Interreg Danube Region Programme project that aims to develop a new multi-level governance model to support sustainable territorial development by mainstreaming green investment across the Danube region.
NONA – New Governance for New Spaces addressed one of the key challenges of sustainable territorial development: how to transform degraded and underused areas into viable, sustainable and socially valuable places while creating the governance and investment conditions needed for their regeneration. The project developed and tested a new approach for mainstreaming green investment into territorial planning, combining spatial, environmental, social, governance and financial perspectives. At its core was an investment life cycle covering the identification of current conditions and needs, planning, land and environmental regulation, implementation, use, and monitoring and evaluation. Participation and stakeholder cooperation were treated as cross-cutting elements throughout the process. The approach was tested across 10 pilot sites in the Danube region, covering different territorial scales and socio-economic contexts. The pilot experience was used to refine the methodology and develop a scalable and transferable model for place-based governance and green investment in degraded areas. NONA also strengthened cooperation between public authorities, civil society, knowledge institutions, investors and financial actors, while creating opportunities for knowledge exchange through the NONA Academy and for connecting territorial investment opportunities with the green finance community through the Danube Green Investment Hub. The project was implemented in line with the principles of the New European Bauhaus, demonstrating how sustainable territorial development can be approached through integrated, participatory and place-based governance.
