Nature-based solutions for sustainable, resilient, and equitable cities

Nature-based Solutions for Cities brings diverse perspectives from across the globe together to describe the state of the art in advancing nature-based solutions (NBS) for cities. Our goal is to provide a handbook for graduate students, early-career professionals, and emerging and advanced scholars to begin working with NBS in ways that consider multiple perspectives, disciplines, and ways of knowing. Together, the chapters in this book aim at understanding how NBS can be better managed, planned, and engaged with, and to center questions of NBS for whom and for what NBS are planned and implemented in cities. Through chapters led by experts in both global south and north contexts, we describe key knowledge and learning for advancing the interdisciplinary science of NBS in, for, and with cities and discuss the frontiers for next-generation NBS

Towards mainstreaming nature-based solutions for achieving biodiverse, resilient, and inclusive cities

Reconnecting humanity to the biosphere must be a focus in cities. Transforming cities to be inclusive, equitable, resilient, and sustainable requires rethinking our relationship to nature, and investing in urban development, design, and governance that brings nature into the center. We provide seven key insights drawn from the chapters in this book: (1) put nature-based solutions (NBS) first in adaptation to climate change in cities; (2) make equity and justice central in the design, planning, management, and governance of NBS in cities; (3) ensure biodiversity is a priority in urban planning for NBS; (4) employ and design NBS to improve human health in cities; (5) realize NBS in cities with inclusive urban planning and innovative governance approaches that respond to local context dynamics; (6) assess the holistic value of urban nature to make a case for NBS in cities; and (7) bring art into NBS and position art as a NBS in cities

Opportunities for Increasing Resilience and Sustainability of Urban Social–Ecological Systems: Insights from the URBES and the Cities and Biodiversity Outlook Projects

Urban futures that are more resilient and sustainable require an integrated social–ecological system approach to urban policymaking, planning, management, and governance. In this article, we introduce the Urban Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (URBES) and the Cities and Biodiversity Outlook (CBO) Projects as new social–ecological contributions to research and practice on emerging urban resilience and ecosystem services. We provide an overview of the projects and present global urbanization trends and their effects on ecosystems and biodiversity, as a context for new knowledge generated in the URBES case-study cities, including Berlin, New York, Rotterdam, Barcelona, and Stockholm. The cities represent contrasting urbanization trends and examples of emerging science–policy linkages for improving urban landscapes for human health and well-being. In addition, we highlight 10 key messages of the global CBO assessment as a knowledge platform for urban leaders to incorporate state-of-the-art science on URBES into decision-making for sustainable and resilient urban development

Nature-Based Solutions for Cities

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly being adopted to address climate change, health, and urban sustainability, yet ensuring they are effective and inclusive remains a challenge. Addressing these challenges through chapters by leading experts in both global south and north contexts, this forward-looking book advances the science of NBS in cities and discusses the frontiers for next-generation urban NBS

Multi-hazard risks in New York City

Megacities are predominantly concentrated along coastlines, making them exposed to a diverse mix of natural hazards. The assessment of climatic hazard risk to cities rarely has captured the multiple interactions that occur in complex urban systems. We present an improved method for urban multi-hazard risk assessment. We then analyze the risk of New York City as a case study to apply enhanced methods for multi-hazard risk assessment given the history of exposure to multiple types of natural hazards which overlap spatially and, in some cases, temporally in this coastal megacity. Our aim is to identify hotspots of multi-hazard risk to support the prioritization of adaptation strategies that can address multiple sources of risk to urban residents. We used socioeconomic indicators to assess vulnerabilities and risks to three climate-related hazards (i.e., heat waves, inland flooding and coastal flooding) at high spatial resolution. The analysis incorporates local experts' opinions to identify sources of multi-hazard risk and to weight indicators used in the multi-hazard risk assessment. Results demonstrate the application of multi-hazard risk assessment to a coastal megacity and show that spatial hotspots of multi-hazard risk affect similar local residential communities along the coastlines. Analyses suggest that New York City should prioritize adaptation in coastal zones and consider possible synergies and/or trade-offs to maximize impacts of adaptation and resilience interventions in the spatially overlapping areas at risk of impacts from multiple hazards.</p