Green with Grey investigates the strategic desealing of industrial platforms in Flanders as a way to reconnect productive territories with regional water and ecological systems. The project starts from the observation that industrial sites occupy a significant share of land take, produce extensive sealed surfaces and rapidly discharge rainwater instead of retaining it within local soils and catchments.

Working through the Flemish Proeftuinen Ontharding programme, the research combines territorial mapping, subcatchment analysis, ecological-connectivity assessment, design scenarios and living-lab experimentation. The official project description notes that industrial platforms represent around 4.5 per cent of Flemish urbanisation and approximately 15 per cent of total land take. These sites are therefore approached as strategic locations where selective removal, redesign and new forms of management can improve infiltration, water retention and habitat continuity.

The project treats desealing as more than a technical operation. It combines actions and policies, top-down and bottom-up initiatives, and processes of doing and undoing. In collaboration with Latitude Platform, KU Leuven and the University of Louvain, it links urban metabolism, landscape design and governance to explore how productive landscapes can contribute to climate adaptation and regional ecological repair.