Making Nature's City
Cities will face many challenges over the coming decades, from adapting to a changing climate to accommodating rapid population growth. A related suite of challenges threatens global biodiversity, resulting in many species facing extinction. While urban planners and conservationists have long treated these issues as distinct, there is growing evidence that cities not only harbor a significant fraction of the world’s biodiversity, but also that they can also be made more livable and resilient for people, plants, and animals through nature-friendly urban design.
Urban ecological science can provide a powerful tool to guide cities towards more biodiversity-friendly design. However, current research remains scattered across thousands of journal articles and is largely inaccessible to practitioners. Our report Making Nature’s City addresses these issues, synthesizing global research to develop a science-based approach for supporting nature in cities.
Using the framework outlined in the report, urban designers and local residents can work together to connect, improve, and expand upon city greenspaces to better support biodiversity while making cities better places to live. As we envision healthier and more resilient cities, Making Nature’s City provides practical guidance for the many actors who together will shape the nature of cities.
In 2022, SFEI translated the Making Nature's City report into an interactive, beautifully designed website, titled the Making Nature's City Toolkit. This resource was built to make the report’s core urban biodiversity framework more accessible to actors and decision-makers in cities across the world, including policymakers, planners, designers, and natural resource managers.
View and download the report
View and download the Executive Summary
View the UN-Habitat Global Urban Lecture
Project Downloads
Report (PDF) 2019 Making Nature's City: A science-based framework for building urban biodiversity
Dates:
2019
Associated Staff:
Associated Data:
Programs and Focus Areas:
Resilient Landscapes Program
Center for Resilient Landscapes
Urban Nature Lab
Primary Project
Healthy Watersheds Resilient Baylands
Through the EPA-funded Healthy Watersheds Resilient Baylands project, SFEI and sixteen partner organizations are developing multi-benefit tools to enhance climate change resilience in San Francisco Bay. Healthy Watersheds Resilient Baylands has two major components: Multi-benefit Urban Greening and Tidal Wetlands Restoration. Through both components, we have developed strategies that inform policy, planning, and design of innovative implementation projects.
Related Projects, News, and Events:
Making Nature’s City Toolkit (Project)
In partnership with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Urban Alliance, the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) has developed the Making Nature’s City Toolkit
Healthy Watersheds Resilient Baylands (Project)
Through the EPA-funded Healthy Watersheds Resilient Baylands project, SFEI and sixteen partner organizations are developing multi-benefit tools to enhance climate change resilience in San Francisco Bay. Healthy Watersheds Resilient Baylands has two major components: Multi-benefit Urban Greening and Tidal Wetlands Restoration. Through both components, we have developed strategies that inform policy, planning, and design of innovative implementation projects.
GreenPlan-IT (Project)
Green infrastructure (GI), such as permeable pavement, rain gardens, tree-well planters, or bioswales, can be used as cost-effective, resilient approaches to managing stormwater at its source while delivering environmental, social, and economic benefits for your community. GreenPlan-IT is a versatile open-source toolset that helps aid municipalities with their efforts to plan and evaluate the placement of green infrastructure in the landscape and track the effectiveness of these installations in reducing stormwater run-off, PCB, and mercury in receiving waters.
Resilience Atlas (Project)
The Resilience Atlas is a compilation of cutting-edge science, creative visions and relevant spatial data to support planners, designers, policy-makers, and residents in the creation of the healthy cities, shorelines and surrounding landscapes of the future. The main goal of the Resilience Atlas is to make the science of resilience more accessible to help communities successfully adapt and thrive in the face of climate change and other challenges.
Building Cities to Better Support Biodiversity (News)
Erica Spotswood and a team of other SFEI scientists have developed a framework outlining the key elements for supporting biodiversity in urban environments.
Next Generation Urban Greening (Project)
SFEI is working with partners across the Bay Area to design tools to help cities achieve biodiversity, stormwater, and climate benefits through multifunctional green infrastructure.
Ecology for Health (Project)
The Ecology for Health guide is based on an extensive review of ecological literature on the potential of cities to support native plants and wildlife, as well as research exploring the health benefits of access to biodiverse greenspace. Anyone making decisions about land use and urban design in cities across the world can benefit from the recommendations in this guide (including community-based organizations, local non-profits, local leaders and policymakers, city planners, urban designers, landscape architects, engineers, gardeners/horticulturists/arborists, residents, and landowners).
Introducing the Making Nature's City Toolkit (News)
Making Nature’s City Toolkit (makingnaturescity.org) is an interactive, beautifully designed website that guides cities through an actionable, science-based approach to support biodiversity in cities. Based on SFEI’s 2019 report titled Making Nature’s City, the Toolkit is intended to make the report’s core urban biodiversity framework more accessible to actors and decision-makers in cities across the world.
New article published in Nature Sustainability linking COVID-19 to nature equity, showing communities of color face starkest burden (News)
Erica Spotswood and a team of scientists published pioneering research in Nature Sustainability, finding that COVID-19 tracks neighborhood greenness in the US, exacerbating existing inequity. The study, titled “Nature inequity and higher COVID-19 case rates in less green neighbourhoods in the United States,” demonstrates a fundamental pattern that low-income and majority-minority communities systematically have less access to nature in urban areas across the U.S.
Google Ecology Advising (Project)
SFEI collaborates with the Google Ecology Program to advance the science and application of urban biodiversity and nature-based sustainability planning.
Moffett Park Specific Plan Urban Ecology Technical Study (Project)
The City of Sunnyvale is incorporating urban ecology into the new Moffett Park Specific Plan, as part of creating an ecological innovation district.
United Nations Global Urban Lecture Released on Making Nature's City (News)
SFEI's Urban Nature Lab and the UN-Habitat Global Urban Lectures series have produced a video on SFEI's Making Nature's City report. The lecture demonstrates why urban conservation planning is an essential component of urban design...