The critical nexus between biodiversity loss, climate change, and societal change is increasingly intertwined, requiring coordinated action, especially in urban contexts. This study examines how urban governance operationalizes the climate-biodiversity-health nexus in four European case cities through a goals-oriented framework informed by the Planetary Health approach. We conduct a qualitative analysis of urban policy documents to assess the degree of change and level of coordination across climate mitigation, adaptation, biodiversity, and health domains. While cities have employed transformative solutions like nature-based solutions (NBS), we consistently identify policy blind spots such as fragmented mid-level targets, sectoral silos, insufficient attention to indirect emissions, and reliance on soft governance tools. We conclude by offering actionable insights for transformative urban nexus governance: mainstream transformative metrics and indicators, create new institutional innovations, integrate multi-benefit NBS across sectors, expand governance toolkits to address trade-offs, and co-create a culture of innovation, learning, co-creation and leadership.

As urbanization intensifies, communities encounter increasing challenges in designing, planning, and managing urban green spaces. Co-design offers a just and participatory approach that can unite diverse interest-holders to identify challenges and devise transformative solutions to complex urban issues such as green space governance. However, while co-design is acknowledged for its potential to foster learning and systemic change, it largely remains anthropocentric, often overlooking multispecies perspectives in planning, policy, and academia. We present a case study from New York City that examines how a multispecies co-design approach may enhance social-ecological systems transformation by exploring participants’ learning experiences and perceptual shifts. The paper begins by exploring the literature on co-design and multispecies thinking within social-ecological systems and their contribution toward transformations, establishing the conceptual groundwork for integrating non-human actors into urban planning. We then present a case study of a multispecies co-design process in New York City and explore how engaging with it contributes to systems transformation. Findings from the case study reveal key motivations for participation, drivers of learning during the process, and emergent transformative solutions. By analyzing these dynamics, this research illustrates how co-design, which integrates multispecies perspectives, may refine ecological decision making and encourage deeper engagement with urban nature. The study argues that integrating multispecies approaches into co-design practices is essential for fostering sustainable societies. The paper concludes with guiding principles for researchers and practitioners seeking to implement inclusive co-design processes in social-ecological systems, particularly in complex urban environments such as New York City.

Daylighting urban waterways is one form of nature-based solution (NBS) gaining attention amongst cities internationally. Urban daylighting – which involves removing historically buried waterways from underground pipes and bringing them back to the surface – is an intensive form of NBS which can address urban stormwater management, reduce combined-sewage overflow issues, improve riparian habitat, and increase biodiversity. The process of reinserting a waterway in an urban environment makes daylighting an important context for analyzing urban NBS trade-offs and their associated justice implications. We use a typology of trade-offs – rigid, governance, and functional trade-offs – intersected with a socio-ecological justice lens to critically approach and understand the implications of trade-offs in urban daylighting projects. We apply this framework to the contemporary case study of daylighting Tibbetts Brook in The Bronx, New York City. Data was collected through interviews with stakeholders involved in the project, and street interviews, to capture the perceptions of trade-offs related to daylighting. We find governance trade-offs related to the inclusion of local community, and choices between accessibility and ecological functioning. Additionally, we identify functional trade-offs related to daylighting as infrastructural upgrades or maximized ecological benefits, considerations of future use and impacts, and the trade-off between novel and landscaped ecosystems. We examine the differentiated socio-ecological justice dilemmas associated with the trade-offs for diverse groups, including non-human nature. Moreover, we indicate how wider policy and social drivers interconnect and shape the trade-offs in daylighting Tibbetts Brook. Overall, we highlight the socio-ecological benefits that daylighting can provide, as well as the complexity of daylighting in cities and the interconnected infrastructural, social, and ecological factors which create justice dilemmas.

Emotions relate to climate change action in various ways. Here we elaborate on how the expansion of digital social networks and advances in artificial intelligence, ranging from recommender systems to generative AI, may affect the way people perceive and engage emotionally on climate change. We develop a simple framework that links individual and collective emotions, AI, and climate action, and suggest three critical areas in need of further investigation.

As cities heat up and expand in area and population, urban forests offer a nature-based solution to enhance liveability and reduce rising temperatures in cities. However, urban forests are vulnerable to climate change and face costly establishment and maintenance challenges. Here we explore four key ecological and socioeconomic barriers to achieving resilient urban forests: species selection, tree supply, tree life cycle (establishment and maintenance, including irrigation) and community engagement. We discuss how integrating traditional urban forestry practices with emerging technology offers a holistic approach to creating resilient, sustainable urban forests that can adapt to climate change while meeting community needs.

Identifying gaps in urban climate change assessment is crucial for developing the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on cities. To bridge the gap between the understanding of local interventions and global climate goals, we call for the strengthening of assessment tools such as urban typologies, case study synthesis and big geospatial data studies. We sort research gaps into five overarching themes: (1) urban form, (2) data and artificial intelligence, (3) policies and governance, (4) system transformation and (5) potentials, costs and losses. Using these methods for categorizing and analyzing cities based on shared characteristics will enable the tailoring and scaling of local climate solutions to global contexts.

The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed that upcoming decades are likely to be accompanied with an increase in climate impacts in urban areas, thereby stressing the need for empowering cities to help them address the challenges ahead by closing the urban adaptation gap. The lock-in systems in which cities are often trapped create resistance to change and leads to missed opportunities to cocreate better futures. Putting nature at the center of urban adaptation agenda is a promising vision that nature-based solutions can help realize if city leaders are adequately supported in accessing the knowledge and resources they need to take action. Despite their proven potential, important barriers to the planning, implementation, and management of nature-based solutions (NbS) for urban climate adaptation persist and need to be urgently addressed. We highlight key barriers related to knowledge gaps and dissemination, policy incentives, and financial autonomy faced by city leaders trying to integrate NbS into policy and planning. In this perspective, we propose four levers of transformative adaptation which build on examples from Europe, the United States, Africa, and Latin America and which have proven successful in supporting cities adopting naturebased adaptation actions, including to 1) produce, assess and share knowledge; 2) adopt incentive-based policies and regulations; 3) facilitate access to multiple sources of funding; and 4) create reflexive monitoring mechanisms. If these steps are taken with the goal of addressing vulnerabilities on the ground, they can unleash the potential of NbS to engage on a path of transformative adaptation.

Promoting people-nature relationships is essential for the effective adoption of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) in cities. Across scientific domains, the potential of eXtended Reality (XR) technologies as a novel tool to support and enable people-nature relationships is increasingly highlighted. However, the application of XR in urban NBS planning remains uncertain. Through a scoping review of the literature, we found five major application areas for employing XR in the context of people-nature relationships: perception and preference assessment, spatial planning and design, education and awareness enhancement, psychological intervention, and monitoring and maintenance. In this paper, we examine how nature’s instrumental, relational, and intrinsic values are communicated through XR and explore the potential role that XR technologies can play in promoting people-nature relationships. Furthermore, we discuss the implications of adopting XR technologies for urban NBS planning.

Cities worldwide are increasingly adopting green interventions, such as nature-based solutions(NBS), to meet urban sustainability goals. However, how and where to optimize investments to receive the most benefit for NBS implementation are largely unknown. Here, we provide a continental-scale assessment of the effect of urban green areas for cooling across 32 Chinese cities that vary in size, climate, and native biome. The relationship between green patch size and surface temperature reveals a consistent decreasing concave-up relationship across varied cities, indicating that increasing green patch size initially corresponds to a decrease in temperature. However, this pattern shifts such that cooling benefits decrease per area once patch size increases to a specific climate threshold, a green-area threshold (GAT) for cooling. The direct implication is that large green space patches will be needed in temperate and drier cities for effective cooling as a climate adaptation strategy, whereas a smaller threshold is recommended in the tropics.