About us
We believe that the challenges cities and regions are facing today cannot be solved in isolation — or with off-the-shelf solutions. They require new ideas, diverse perspectives, collaboration across disciplines and sectors, and the capacity to turn knowledge into action.
Our mission
This is where BURST comes in. Our mission is to help cities and regions build the capacity, connections and confidence to create a Climate-Resilient, Innovative and Inclusive Future.
We act as a catalyst for change, bringing together the people, expertise, knowledge and networks needed to address complex urban and regional challenges. We connect local realities with smart ideas and experience from across Europe and beyond. Helping cities and regions learn from others, while developing solutions that fit their own context.
We work alongside our partners to co-create solutions, build capacity and move from strategy to implementation. Because meaningful change is not something that can simply be delivered from the outside. It grows when local knowledge, communities, institutions and external expertise come together — when people are empowered to shape the future of their own places.
Our services
BURST provides tailored advisory and capacity-building services to help cities and regions navigate complex challenges with a core focus on urban regeneration and sustainable regional development. We understand places. We shape strategies. We bring people together. We connect knowledge and experience. And we help turn all of this into action.
Place-based Strategies & Actions
We help cities and regions understand their specific challenges, develop a shared vision and turn it into practical, implementable action.
- Understanding the place: mapping local challenges, needs, assets and opportunities through desk research, quantitative and qualitative research.
- Learning from elsewhere: collecting and analysing relevant case studies, good practices and state-of-the-art solutions from Europe and beyond, including benchmarking against comparable places.
- Building a shared vision: facilitating stakeholder dialogue, ideation and visioning to define strategic goals and shared transition pathways.
- Turning insights into strategy: synthesising research, benchmarking and stakeholder input into strategic frameworks, priorities and action plans.
- From strategy to action: defining pilot actions, roadmaps, responsibilities, timelines and financial frameworks, including advice on funding opportunities.
- Supporting implementation: facilitating and coordinating co-designed pilot actions and helping partners navigate challenges as they arise.
- Learning and adapting: monitoring and evaluating actions, feeding lessons learned back into strategies and informing the next cycle of action.
Policy & Governance Advisory
We help cities and regions strengthen the policies, institutions and governance arrangements needed to make change possible and sustainable.
- Understanding the governance landscape: mapping policies, strategies, organisational structures, decision-making processes and stakeholder networks.
- Breaking silos: identifying opportunities for stronger cooperation across departments, institutions, sectors and levels of governance.
- Improving policies and incentives: developing recommendations for more effective policies, regulations and support mechanisms.
- Designing better governance: advising on collaborative and participatory governance structures that improve the quality of decisions and their implementation.
- Testing new approaches: designing and supporting pilot interventions that allow new policy and governance approaches to be tested and refined before wider adoption.
- Supporting change: facilitating and mentoring policy and governance improvement processes, with continuous learning and adaptation.
- Strengthening European collaboration: acting as a trusted partner to cities and regions in European projects, helping them make the most of partnership expertise while keeping their local ambitions at the centre.
Stakeholder Engagement & Co-creation
We design and facilitate meaningful participation processes that bring the right people together, generate new ideas and build ownership of change.
- Mapping stakeholders: identifying relevant actors and advising on engagement approaches based on their interests, influence and role in the process.
- Designing participation: developing flexible, context-specific methodologies for stakeholder engagement, co-creation, co-design and participatory decision-making.
- Building collaborative spaces: setting up and supporting stakeholder groups, living labs and other forms of collaborative governance tailored to local needs and ambitions.
- Facilitating dialogue: designing and moderating workshops, consultations and collaborative exercises using engaging offline and digital tools.
- Bringing in wider expertise: connecting interdisciplinary expertise — from engineering, architecture and ecology to psychology and economics — with local knowledge and stakeholder perspectives.
- Learning and adapting: synthesising stakeholder input and continuously adapting the process to emerging insights, needs and opportunities.
- Assessing impact: evaluating participation processes and their outcomes, both for participants and for wider local and regional governance.
Knowledge Exchange & Dissemination
We connect cities, regions and organisations with relevant knowledge, experience and partners across Europe and help them adapt and apply what works elsewhere.
- Navigating European knowledge: bringing up-to-date knowledge on European policies, strategic priorities, emerging approaches and state-of-the-art solutions to our partners.
- Connecting people and places: building links with European cities, regions, professional organisations and expert networks to create opportunities for knowledge exchange and collaboration.
- Finding transferable solutions: identifying good practices and innovative approaches that can be adapted to address shared local and regional challenges.
- Supporting adaptation and transfer: designing and facilitating knowledge-transfer processes that help partners turn external experience into solutions that work in their own context.
- Capturing and sharing learning: documenting lessons, developing practical guides and tools, and creating knowledge that can be reused and replicated.
- Building capacity: disseminating validated solutions through events, networks, online channels, training and capacity-building activities.
- Growing European collaboration: building synergies and partnerships among initiatives, cities, regions and organisations working on similar challenges.
Our action fields
Nature-based Solutions, the New European Bauhaus and Innovative & Inclusive Governance are the three interconnected areas of expertise that shape how we approach challenges, develop solutions and support our partners in creating more sustainable, inclusive and resilient places.
Beyond these three core areas, our holistic approach and transversal expertise provides meaningful insights and contributions to projects and collaborations in the following fields as well.
Let’s collaborate on impactful European projects
Contact us to learn more about BURST’s knowledge, networks, projects and services.
