Stanford, Bronwen, and others, 'Making Nature’s City: An Applied Science Framework to Guide Evaluation and Planning for Urban Biodiversity Conservation', in Max Lambert, and Christopher Schell (eds), Urban Biodiversity and Equity: Justice-Centered Conservation in Cities (Oxford, 2023; online edn, Oxford Academic, 19 Oct. 2023), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198877271.003.0014, accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
Conserving urban biodiversity will rely on updating our planning paradigms. This work synthesizes urban ecological research and identifies seven elements—patch size, connections, matrix quality, habitat diversity, native vegetation, special resources, and stewardship and management—as key factors associated with urban biodiversity. It then distils these findings into a science-based framework for building urban biodiversity. Beyond providing a framework, it demonstrates how to use this approach to integrate conservation into urban planning and provides an example where this framework has been applied. Such a landscape ecological approach will provide a science-driven approach to advance urban biodiversity and promote equitable access to urban nature.
