Cities are expanding at a pace humanity has never seen before. More people, more buildings, more pressure on the systems that keep life running. As climate impacts intensify and urban inequality deepens, researchers and city leaders are asking a simple but radical question: can nature itself be engineered back into the urban world to make cities more resilient?
For decades, most cities grew by pushing nature to the margins. As one expert in the Global Roadmap project puts it, designing without nature “hasn’t been that good for us.” The consequences are now painfully visible. Heatwaves, flooding, air pollution and infrastructure stress are no longer separate issues. They collide, amplify each other and shape the daily lives of billions.
Nature based solutions (NBS) offer a different path. Green roofs cool overheated neighbourhoods. Wetlands absorb stormwater long before it becomes a disaster. Trees improve air quality while strengthening biodiversity. Each action is small, but together they form a powerful, scalable toolkit for healthier cities.
Until recently, these ideas were scattered across isolated pilot projects. Successes were local, fragmented and difficult to compare. That’s what the Global Roadmap for Urban Nature Based Solutions set out to change.
The roadmap is the first region by region synthesis of urban NBS knowledge. Built by 80 experts across seven world regions, it collects hundreds of studies, policies and real world examples into a single shared framework. Instead of loosely connected case studies, the roadmap maps relationships between climate risk, governance, biodiversity and social equity, showing how nature based strategies work not just in theory, but in different cultural, political and ecological contexts.
One message is clear: there is no universal template. Cities must look to their own geography, communities and challenges. As one contributor explains, “We cannot use a one size fits all approach.” The strengths of the roadmap lie in that diversity, opening the door for regions to learn from one another while building solutions tailored to their own realities.
The roadmap’s ambition goes beyond documenting what exists. It acts as a global learning system that helps cities move from small experiments to integrated, citywide nature based strategies. It positions nature not as an aesthetic backdrop, but as an ally. A practical blueprint for a greener, fairer, more resilient urban future.
NATURA and the Global Roadmap team frame this work as a call to reimagine how cities are built. Their vision is simple: make nature based approaches second nature.
Find out more here: https://www.nbsroadmap.org/
