Cities often don’t appreciate the benefits of green infrastructure (GI) enough. To recognise the extent to which green infrastructure and nature-based solutions (NbS) are present in the urban policy, we conducted a review of planning, strategic and programming documents of Poznań City as a Case Study.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) is the latest contribution to the green concept family. NBS is defined as actions based in nature addressing societal challenges. In this study, we lean on the concept boundary object, broken down into three analytical categories: use, core ideas and granularities, to explore the cohesive and fragmenting powers of the NBS concept, and discuss its future role in green space governance. The study is based on a structured, qualitative review of 112 scientific peer-reviewed publications that use the term NBS.

The design of efficient Green Infrastructure —GI— systems is a key issue to achieve sustainable development city planning goals in the twenty-first century. This study’s main contribution is the identification of potential GI elements to better align the environmental, social and economic perspectives in the GI design by including information about the use, activities, preferences and presence of people. To achieve this, user generated content from Location Based Social Network —LBSN— Foursquare is used as a complementary data source.

Blue-green infrastructure (BGI) is becoming a more popular means of dealing with climate change and climate change-related events. However, as the concept of BGI is relatively new, many urban and rural planners are unfamiliar with the barriers they may face during the lifecycle of a BGI project. As a result, some have been hesitant to adopt BGI solutions. The literature has unveiled many of the barriers that inhibit the successful development of BGI, however, this information has yet to be presented in a manner that allows for easy identification.

This new report by the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency in collaboration with the Clingendael Institute and other Dutch research institutes points to pressure on security and migration arising from too little, too much or polluted water. Many integrated solutions are possible to divert this trend towards a sustainable and climate-resilient world.

Dans les villes en développement, les marchés fonciers et immobiliers sont en grande partie informels. Ils concernent les pauvres comme les classes moyennes. À Phnom Penh, l’analyse de la dynamique des marchés fonciers et immobiliers et des modes d’accès au logement dans les quartiers informels permet de mieux comprendre les tendances contradictoires des dynamiques en cours. Cette analyse peut alimenter la définition d’une politique de l’habitat destinée à réguler le marché foncier et immobilier et favoriser l’accès à la ville pour les populations pauvres.

Cette journée de réflexion a été consacrée à la sécurisation de l’accès au sol et à l’habitat dans les villes du Sud, et notamment aux marges de celles-ci, dans les quartiers dits précaires ou informels. Elle s’inscrit dans la continuité des débats initiés lors de la 3e conférence mondiale des Nations unies sur le logement et le développement urbain durable (Habitat III), qui s’est tenue à Quito en 2016.

Nearly 200 million Africans currently live in slums. Urban operations are one of the main tools for improving living conditions in informal settlements, where land tenure, housing, development and services largely function outside any official system. While progress has undoubtedly been made over the last decade, these operations have had mixed social, economic, urban and environmental impacts.

Today, the Coalition for Urban Transitions releases a new report ‘Seizing the Urban Opportunity’, which provides insights from six emerging economies on how national governments can recover from COVID-19, tackle the climate crisis and secure shared prosperity through cities. Launching as a call to action for national governments ahead of COP26 in Glasgow, it builds on the Coalition’s flagship 2019 report: Climate Emergency, Urban Opportunity.

US cities are at the forefront of the sustainable development challenge. They contain 80% of the country’s population, and therefore have the capacity to make or break SDG achievement (US Census Bureau 2016). But, while crucial to SDG attainment, they Executive Summary cannot accomplish this alone. While 80 percent of US residents live in urban areas, only 3 percent of land is urban; rural and urban areas are deeply interconnected (US Census Bureau 2016).