Urban NBS Day 2024: Embracing Urban Nature for Health

On Friday 31 May, academics and practitioners met at the Social Impact Factory in Utrecht for the third edition of the Urban NBS Day. Previously funded by the EWUU Alliance, this years event was put on by the Transforming Cities community within Utrecht University. The goal of this day was to discuss the role of urban nature in mental and physical health. This discussion aimed to explore why the biophysical/ecological and human health ‘spheres’ in cities remain detached despite the known benefits of urban nature based solutions. 

Helen Toxopeus kicked of the day with an introduction to the topic of health and nature-based solutions. Although the importance of nature for health slowly reaches mainstream media, one of the challenges for a push in more urban nature can be found in the siloed financing. The benefits of nature-based solutions for each different domain, might not outweigh the investment costs. The solution can be found in co-financing and co-creation.

Timon McPhearson (The New School), the event's keynote speaker, began by presenting an overview of the different ways nature contributes to health and wellbeing. The evidence for the positive effect of nature on (preventive) health is strong, but it is a challenge to make sure that policy makers and urban planners prioritize the development and conservation of urban nature. By highlighting that only 37% of the world’s 500 most populous cities have developed a dedicated strategy focused on nature or biodiversity, he shared a call for people working in the field of urban nature to keep researching the topic of nature. 

How much more evidence do you need to act?

This challenge was also shared during the panel discussion with Berry Gersonius (Gemeente Dordrecht), Hanneke Kruize (RIVM) and Wendy Chen (University of Hong Kong) and led by Niki Frantzeskaki. Wendy Chen highlighted the need for more research connecting the benefits of urban nature and health and how green spaces can create social cohesion and allow local communities to flourish. Additionally, better integration between academia and policymakers/societal actors must be established to fund the right research and properly communicate the benefits of urban nature to society. As Hanneke Kruize stated: `How much more evidence do you need to act?’

Many important takeaways also came up from the Q&A session with the audience. The experience of Berry Gersonius with getting funding for Dordrecht City Park pointed to the difficulty of showing the diverse benefits of greening to investors with varying interests in a way that makes financial sense. Co-creation should be the starting point to involve the private sector and citizens in the process. Co-creation and communication with citizens were key aspects touched on by all panelists, especially regarding the benefits of urban nature. Initiatives such as Dordrecht’s weekend of nature which engage citizens throughout all neighborhoods in the city with different activities and the government of Hong Kong which takes the lead to educate citizens on the benefits of being in green areas are great examples of this. Although co-creation can expose conflicting aims between actors, it is an important process to understand what is important to citizens.

The final remarks from our panelists call attention to the need to perceive greening as a benefit rather than a cost and build a way to include that as an actual value within asset management, to be open to learning from one another, both from an academia-policymaker and academia-academia perspective, and to continue pushing for high quality research into the health benefits of urban nature. A small taste of this research was already shared in the afternoon, where researchers from various organisations presented their projects on nature-based solutions. Katrin Merfeld managed the afternoon session and invited all participants to visit the different projects. 

This years event was put on by the Transforming Cities community within Utrecht University. The event was organized by a multidisciplinary team across faculties including Helen Toxopeus (Utrecht School of Economics), Niki Frantzeskaki (Human Geography and Spatial Planning), Katrin Merfeld (Utrecht School of Economics) and Geertje Speelman and Alexis Beaudoin (Transforming Cities community) who ensured things ran smoothly throughout the day. 

The Transforming Cities team is already looking forward to next year's Urban NBS Day which will be held in May 2025. If you would like to be included on the invitation list, let us know at future.cities@uu.nl!