The Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) concept is the most recent entry to discussions around how “nature” can be mobilized to render urban areas more resilient to the threat of climate change. The concept has been championed by the European Commission (EC) as a tool that can transform contemporary environmental, social and economic challenges into opportunities for innovation, bolstering Europe's position as a leader in climate change mitigation and adaptation. With its current research and innovation programme—Horizon 2020—the EC looks to position itself as the global NBS frontrunner, providing funding to cities to act as NBS demonstrator projects across the continent. These are expected to provide best-practice examples that can be replicated globally. This paper focuses on three Horizon 2020-funded NBS demonstrator projects: Connecting Nature, URBAN GreenUP and Grow Green, each of which brings together a suite of urban partners from both within and outside the European Union (EU). It examines the internal “politics” i.e., the aims and internal governance and implementation issues associated with these projects, and analyses how partners perceive the NBS concept. To engage with these aims, interviews were conducted with a diverse set of NBS “practitioners” working within the three projects. Analysis showed that the projects aim to influence climate-change resilient and sustainable urbanism through the process of retrofitting cities with small-scale green and blue interventions, as well as help the EU secure stronger diplomatic relations with neighboring non-EU countries and key international trade partners. It also illustrated that for many project partners, NBS is perceived to be a novel concept, because it re-frames pre-existing terms such as Green and Blue Infrastructure (GBI) and Ecosystem Services (ES) in a way that makes principles of urban greening more understandable to lay audiences and more politically palatable for urban governments. However, partners also warn that this framing of NBS has led to a narrow and idealized representation of nature; one that simultaneously undervalues biodiversity and oversells the capacity of natural processes to provide “solutions” to urban climate vulnerability and broader patterns of unsustainable urbanism.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) have been central to the European Union’s drive to address climate change, ecological degradation, and promote urban prosperity. Via an examination of the Horizon 2020-funded URBAN GreenUP project in Liverpool, this paper explores mainstreaming NBS in city planning. It uses evidence from pre- and post-intervention surveys with Liverpool residents and interviews with local business, environmental, government, and community sector experts to illustrate how a complex interplay of scale, location, focus, and visibility of NBS influences perceptions of the added value of NBS. This paper highlights the requirement that NBS interventions be bespoke and responsive to the overarching needs of residents and other stakeholders. Moreover, we underscore the importance of expert input into the design, location, and maintenance of NBS and call for these key drivers of successful delivery to be better integrated into work programs. This paper also notes that the type and size of NBS interventions impact perceptions of their value, with smaller projects being viewed as less socially and ecologically valuable compared to larger investments. We conclude that while small-scale NBS can support climatic, health, or ecological improvements in specific instances, strategic, larger-scale, and more visible investments are required to accrue substantive benefits and gain acceptance of NBS as a legitimate and effective planning tool.

With the signing of the Belfast Agreement, Belfast (Northern Ireland, UK) entered a new phase of urban development. Moving away from notions of division, Belfast City Council envisaged an inclusive and accessible city. Over a 20-year period, there have been significant changes in Belfast’s physical, socio-cultural, and political structure, reframing the city as a post-conflict space. However, there has been limited analysis of the role of parks in this process. This paper examines perceptions of parks, asking whether the promotion of a “shared spaces” policy aligns with local use. Through a mixed-methods approach, park users were surveyed to reflect on the meanings of parks in the city. We argue that although residual interpretations associated with historical socio-cultural divisions remain, parks are predominately multi-community amenities. The analysis illustrates that although destination parks attract greater patronage, there is visible clustering around ‘anchor’ sites at the local scale, especially in neighbourhoods with significant Catholic or Protestant identities.

A growing body of research is examining how Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) are offering planners, politicians and engineers options to promote respond to a wide range of biophysical and socio-economic problems. However, despite the increasing popularity of NBS, there is limited analysis available on how these ‘solutions’ align with urban problems, at what scale they are most effective, and what costs are associated with investment in urban nature. This paper analyses current approaches to urban sustainability via an examination of the EU Funded Horizon 2020- funded project, URBAN GreenUP, in Liverpool (UK) to deconstruct how rhetoric translates to practical applications of NBS interventions. It interrogates the interactions of projects, policies and political buy-in for NBS, and argues that an integrated understanding of scale, function, and location is needed to successfully address issues of urban climate change vulnerability. This is contextualised against the wider discussions of NBS associated with other EU-funded projects. It concludes that although investment in NBS offer a useful approach to development, they cannot overcome existing barriers to investment in environmental improvements without attention to the same barriers that have always existed. Moreover, the paper argues that the promotion of NBS as solutions to problems is only effective when the problems are transparently and collaboratively defined.