Nature-Based Solutions Accelerating Urban Sustainability Transitions in Cities: Lessons from Dresden, Genk and Stockholm Cities

Abstract

Nature based solutions are amongst other practices that transition initiatives work with when intervening in their place and change its fabric. Focusing on the actors establishing, driving and scaling these solutions in and across cities, we come to evince that nature-based solutions have transformative social impact since they mediate new social relations and new social configurations contributing to social innovation in cities, and change nature perception and human-nature relations in urban contexts. We built from evidence in three city-regions that over the past years they saw the proliferation of community-based and policy-based initiatives with the aim to improve sustainability, livability and the aspiration to foster inclusivity and social justice in their cities: the city of Dresden in Germany, the city of Genk in Belgium and the city-region of Stockholm in Sweden. We will elaborate on the different ways nature based solutions as practices of transition initiatives in cities get scaled and contribute to accelerating sustainability transitions in these city-regions. In line with this, we will draw cross-case lessons for urban planning on the tensions transition initiatives that experiment with and institutionalize nature-based solutions in their cities face when actively pursue acceleration strategies and pathways to scale.

Key Enablers of and Barriers to the Uptake and Implementation of Nature-Based Solutions in Urban Settings: A Review

“…Micro-level actors constitute the most diverse category of actors and are the primary beneficiaries of NBS [36]. The role of this group also varies in different cases from end-users with little decision-making power (top-down management) to the initiators of NBS innovations with genuine power to make decisions (bottom-up management) [26,31]. Micro-level actors are core to the NBS concept and contribute essential contextual knowledge and experience to management actions.…”

“…For example, NGOs and scientists functioned as transboundary actors in a Polish green roof initiative [17], whereas a project officer, appointed by the local district council, played this role in the case of a NBS project focused on flood management in the UK [16]. Frantzeskaki et al [31] argued that the role of transboundary actors is central to NBS innovation diffusion.…”

SDGs and Innovation in the Business Context Literature Review

“…Other methods relate to the design of new dwellings by using completely innovative solutions that respect economic, ethical, and environmental objectives, as in the case of the invention of housing domes dedicated to poor and rural populations [77]. Implementation of nature-based solutions also seem to be an innovative [78][79][80] opportunity to pursue SDG 11 [81].…”

The Acceleration of Urban Sustainability Transitions: A Comparison of Brighton, Budapest, Dresden, Genk, and Stockholm

“…In the following, we will discuss five acceleration mechanisms and elaborate on them on the basis of an extensive literature review (for a detailed account of a conceptual framework on acceleration see [5,6,8]).…”

“…In order to investigate these questions, we employ a newly developed conceptual framework of acceleration mechanisms of sustainability transitions that has been presented in [5][6][7][8]. In the next section, we give a brief overview of the literature on the acceleration of sustainability transitions and the acceleration mechanisms.…”