Urban Transformations is calling for submissions to our Collection on Co-creation and co-production for transforming towns and cities with nature-based solutions.
It is barely a decade since the phrase ‘nature-based solutions’ exploded onto the urban transformation stage, bringing with it a promise of renowned cities with multiple co-benefits. According to the European Commission, nature-based solutions are “inspired and supported by nature, which are cost-effective, simultaneously provide environmental, social, and economic benefits and help build resilience. Such solutions bring more, and more diverse, nature and natural features and processes into cities, landscapes, and seascapes, through locally adapted, resource-efficient, and systemic interventions”. One key element of the nature-based solution approach is that unlike more technological solutions they have the potential for delivering co-benefits beyond the solution the provide. Therefore, it can be of huge benefit to understand what these benefits may be and how they can be co-created or co-produced at different urban scales, including diverse communities, and how their efficacy can be measured.
Therefore, since 2016 there has been an ever-growing number of well-funded research projects with a central focus on the transformative capacity or co-benefit potential of the nature-based solution concept. Many of these projects were and are funded by the European Commission, but there is also a growing number of initiatives supported by national funding agencies, and in combination several hundreds of millions of Euro has been, and will continue to be, spent on exploring the potential and potency of this relatively new concept (see: Collier, 2022). This significant investment is aimed at establishing nature-positive pathways for transforming cities and towns in order to build climate and environmental resilience, renature and rewild communities, improve social and personal well-being, and stimulate design, innovation, stewardship, and governance. With the investment in nature-based solutions set to continue, it is time to take stock and ask: how is progress going?
This special collection is seeking contributions from those research and innovation communities, city and urban councils, companies, and NGOs, all of whom are working to mainstream nature-based solutions through novel co-creation and co-production approaches that have as a result to co-create pathways for scaling, to develop and invest in nature-based enterprises, or to explore the unquantified co-benefits of nature-based solutions. This collection also seeks to provide evidence of how nature-based solutions are transforming our towns and cities, whilst also identifying those barriers and stumbling blocks to transformation. In addition, we wish to learn about new mechanisms that resulted in innovations and surprise findings through co-creation processes. We also wish to learn more about the co-design of nature-based solutions as well as see examples of how co-management may be implemented for mainstreaming nature-based solutions in cities. Finally, we would like to learn more on novel nature-based enterprises and governance structures that can be co-produced through the implementation of nature-based solutions. Because of the expanse of work being undertaken in the nature-based solution field, there are many ways to contribute to this collection and so we welcome contributions from academic and non-academic actors.
References:
Collier, M.J. (2022) Hyperlinked compendium of nature-based solutions projects 2016-2026. pp. 1
