Assessing patterns and gaps in recent urban nature and biodiversity planning across 25 European cities

Source abstract

In 2020, the European Union adopted its Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, calling on cities with more than 20,000 inhabitants to develop Urban Nature Plans as strategic instruments to protect biodiversity and support climate adaptation. While urban naturalization processes have been widely addressed in scientific literature, previous research has highlighted a persistent gap between theoretical frameworks and their translation into planning practice. There is also a lack of methodologies to monitor how these plans are being developed. To address this gap, this paper investigates how UNPs have been conceived and structured in Europe following the adoption of the EU Biodiversity Strategy. The study is based on a comparative analysis of 25 documents developed by European cities since 2020, focusing on identifying emerging patterns and gaps in both the framework and the content of these documents. Results show that climate change is consistently framed as the primary key challenge while green infrastructure emerges as the dominant structuring concept supporting urban nature planning. Alignment across European, national, and local strategic and legislative governance levels varies considerably. Rather than converging towards a typical European UNP model, the analysis reveals a wide range of approaches. Based on these findings, four main plan types are identified: comprehensive, conceptual, programmatic, and complementary. Overall, this research contributes to a more detailed understanding of the current state of urban nature planning in Europe and provides a robust empirical foundation for future studies, particularly those aimed at addressing the implementation gap affecting similar planning instruments.