Supported by the CLEVER Cities project, UrbanByNature is continuing capacity building in the South Eastern Europe region! The third session of the UrbanByNature South Eastern Europe webinar series will focus on step 4 of the UbN methodology, Commit and Plan. This step addresses fostering commitment from local decision and policy makers to common goals and […]
Sfântu Gheorghe, Romania is striving to increase the city’s resilience to natural disasters associated with climate change. Concurrently, the city is prioritizing increasing and improving access to green spaces for local residents. The city is in particular concerned with the flood prone Debren River area, which is home to marginalized communities experiencing a number of […]
Cities throughout Europe and beyond are increasingly integrating natural elements within the design of urban spaces to make them greener, safer and more climate-friendly. These so-called nature-based solutions come in all shapes and forms, for example as green roofs or walls to improve building insulation and filter pollutants, or as pollinator-friendly gardens to bring neighbours […]
With the help of input and design ideas from local residents, CLEVER City London, alongside Peabody and its appointed design partner, muf architecture/art, has successfully delivered its first nature-based solution: an edible garden in South Thamesmead. To celebrate, the CLEVER Cities team organised a community gathering on July 3rd to introduce locals to the garden […]
Is biodiversity a necessity in nature-based urban interventions, or only a nice-to-have? The IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services leaves no doubts regarding the severity of the biodiversity crisis: approximately 25 percent of species in Europe and Central Asia are already threatened with extinction in most of the plant and animal groups […]
The city of Hamburg (Germany) and a team of 33 other cities and organisations in Europe, South America and China launched the international European-funded CLEVER Cities project on 6-8 June in Hamburg. Cities coordinate and lead the project and will use natural interventions, such as building new green spaces, to address social, economic and environmental […]
The environmental mantra of Malmö sounds simple: it should be easy for the Swedish city’s residents to make climate-smart choices. Local targets, however, are anything but easy: reducing Malmö’s climate impacts, greening its urban environment, and enriching local biodiversity and ecosystem health – all by 2030. The city is an early adopter of the Malmö […]
It is common knowledge that living near nature makes you healthier and happier. But is it possible to actually measure this? How can decision-makers make the case for investing in nature-based interventions? The CLEVER Cities project team is working on coming up with a way to do exactly that through a combination of hard science, […]
The second edition of the Milan Green Week, an event promoted by the Municipality of Milan and dedicated to greening the city, was held from 26 to 29 September 2019. CLEVER Cities Milan participated in the Green Week with a series of events including a day dedicated to nature-based solutions in Milan and a day […]
Mainstreaming nature-based solutions (NbS) in policy is essential to ensure widespread uptake and implementation and can further serve as a tool to increase NbS support, funding and participatory design. In the case of CLEVER Cities’ partner Quito, efforts to mainstream NbS were seen as being necessary to increase the number of project proposals for mitigating […]
Co-creation and co-governance are closely associated but not always present together. They represent two distinct concepts that are related in many, if not most contexts. We consider the definitions of co-creation and co-governance as well as how governance may emerge out of co-creation processes. In fact, co-creation can be a powerful catalyst, especially when focused […]
Co-creation is a key process for the effective design and implementation of nature-based solutions (NbS). The term refers to a collaborative approach which brings together diverse actors with different knowledge and backgrounds, working together toward a shared outcome or goal. In the context of urban regeneration and NbS, co-creation entails the involvement of stakeholders and […]
Community research is a participatory research method where people with lived experience of the issues or geographical community being studied take part in directing and conducting research. Community researchers (also referred to as ‘peer researchers’) are supported to do this, and may be involved in assisting with research design, developing research tools, collecting and analysing […]
“Green rush to Lindängen”: this is the vision that the CLEVER Cities team in Malmö (Sweden) has set for its CLEVER Action Lab. The Malmö team – hosts of the Kick-off Workshop for fellow cities, which took place on 16-17 May 2019 – presented their vision of a peaceful, healthy, biodiverse and proud neighbourhood, with […]
