Nature Futures for the Urban Century: Integrating multiple values into urban management

Abstract

There is an emerging consensus that the health of the planet depends on the coexistence between rapidly growing cities and the natural world. One strategy for guiding cities towards sustainability is to facilitate a planning process based on positive visions for urban systems among actors and stakeholders. This paper presents the Urban Nature Futures Framework (UNFF), a framework for scenario building for cities that is based on three Nature Futures perspectives: Nature for Nature, Nature for Society, and Nature as Culture. Our framework engages stakeholders with envisioning these perspectives through four components using participatory methods and quantitative models: identification of socio-ecological feedbacks in cities, assessment of indirect impacts of cities on biodiversity, development of multi-scale indicators, and development of scenarios. Stakeholders may use this framework to explore options for integrating nature in urban areas and assess how community preferences shape cityscapes and distribution of benefits from nature across scales.

Citation

Mansur, A.V., McDonald, R.I., Güneralp, B., Kim, H., de Oliveira, J.A.P., Callaghan, C.T., Hamel, P., Kuiper, J.J., Wolff, M., Liebelt, V. and Martins, I.S., 2022. Nature futures for the urban century: Integrating multiple values into urban management. Environmental Science & Policy, 131, pp.46-56.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2022.01.013