• Forestry
• Environment
• Other

Nature-Based Solutions for Cities

More than half of all people already live in cities, and the trend is rising. This makes large cities the laboratories of the future where nature and people co-exist and co-habitate, but also where the effects of climate change and air pollution, as well as extreme flooding, hit people first and with full force. Not exclusively but also in cities, nature and people are inextricably linked, like two siblings growing up in the same environment. And despite the harshest treatment of nature by humans in urban environments, nature and its ecosystems hold many healing and supporting potentials for the humans inhabiting urban ecosystems. Green vegetation cools and binds pollutants, blue infrastructure buffers heat and lowers maximum temperatures, as we saw in central India during the first major heat wave of 2022. Finally, and amazingly, partially hybrid biodiversity ensures resilience and resistance of those ecosystem services. Green and blue infrastructures are important media and mediators between people and nature in cities. For many urgent societal challenges in maintaining and improving the human quality of life in our cities around the world, nature, natural but also designed ecosystems, is regarded as a promising problem solver. That is what Nature-Based Solutions for Cities is about. This book presents valuable experiences and applications of the concept of nature-based solutions from across the globe with a unique view and excellent interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary expertise. In this way, quantitative analyses of the effectiveness of nature-based solutions on the one hand and integrated assessments and governance approaches on the other are compared. In addition, one part illustrates the irreplaceable co-benefits of designing or mimicking nature for local biodiversity. Nature, so the authors argue, is most effective for many aspects of people’s mental health to withstand heat waves, noise, and feelings of anxiety due to urban density. Finally, a more radical or direct approach to engaging with art and design for and with nature-based solutions involving Indigenous knowledge, presented by a group of authors in the last part of the book, became one of the definite highlights, of many, of this great book.