MAKING NATURE’S CITY

TOOLKIT

Our relationship with nature is essential to human life and health.

Planning for nature in cities is planning for healthy, resilient communities.

Why Support Nature in Cities?

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, and many species face potential 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 that they can also be made more livable and resilient for people, plants, and animals through nature-friendly urban design.

Our Approach

Making Nature’s City synthesizes global research into a science-based approach for supporting nature in cities. The approach, called the Urban Biodiversity Framework, identifies just seven landscape elements that work together to maximize biodiversity.

These seven elements provide practical guidance for shaping healthier and more resilient cities of the future. Using the Urban Biodiversity Framework, local residents and urban designers can work together to link local parks, greenways, green roofs, street trees, stormwater basins, commercial landscaping, and backyards to support a cohesive, functioning urban ecosystem, while making cities better places to live.

The Seven Elements of Urban Biodiversity

How to “Make Nature’s City”

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.

Continue reading about the contents of the Making Nature’s City Toolkit to learn how your city can help nature to thrive.

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