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Frantzeskaki, N.; Collier, M.J.; Hölscher, K.; Gaziulusoy, I.; Ossola, A.; Albulescu, P.; Bonneau, M.; Borgström, S.; Connop, S.; Dumitru, A.; Geneletti, D.; Gorissen, L.; Levin-Keitel, M.; MacIntyre, T.; Mascinga, I.; McQuaid, S.; Tabory, S.; von Wirth, T.; Vadergert, P.; Vos, P.; Penha-Lopes, G.; Säumel, I.; Wachtel, T. & Wittmayer, J.M., Premises, practices and politics of co-creation for urban sustainability transitions, Urban Transformations, 7, 2025, p7 ,
Notes: [Co-creation is becoming a widely used governance process for city-making and city-transitioning being conceptually entangled with experimentation, innovation and collaboration. In this paper, we clarify that co-creation is different from experimentation, enables urban innovation and collaboration, and is broader than knowledge co-production. This paper is a co-produced outcome of 26 scholars and contributes to the research of urban transitions by asking three pressing questions that we find paramount in advancing the research and practice of co-creation: Why co-create? How to co-create? With whom to co-create? To do this, we first present the distinct advantages of co-creation in comparison to participatory processes as four premises: generating actionable knowledge, progressing urban agendas towards more inclusive urban solutions, advancing research to transformative and transdisciplinary approaches, as well as bridging multiple knowledge bases of diverse urban actors to ensure democratic planning of cities. We then present key practices and skills required for engaging in and organizing co-creation processes. Next to advocacy, communication, leadership, and organizational skills, we identified that creativity, playfulness, emotional intelligence, receptivity, and collaborative learning are important, yet often overlooked, skills and capabilities for co-creation. We investigate the politics of co-creation through the lens of three communities that have different positioning in co-creation: communities of practice, communities of interest, and communities of influence. Our proposal for future research on co-creation and its applications is centered on measuring its impact against its premises while recognizing the importance of having different metrics and reflexive measures that can evaluate its deep impact and its relation to urban transitions.],
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McPhearson, T.; Frantzeskaki, N.; Ossola, A.; Diep, L.; Anderson, P.M.L.; Blatch, T.; Collier, M.J.; Cook, E.M.; Culwick Fatti, C.; Grabowski, Z.J.; Grimm, N.B.; Haase, D.; Herreros-Cantis, P.; Kavonic, J.; Lin, B.B.; Lopez Meneses, D.H.; Matsler, M.; Moglia, M.; Morató, J.; O"Farrell, P.; Roy, P.; Singh, C.; Wang, J.; Zhou, W., A global review of urban nature-based solutions: Identifying knowledge gaps and opportunities at the research frontier, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122, (29), 2025, pe2315910121 ,
Notes: [Nature-based solutions (NbS) have emerged as a key strategy for sustainably addressing multiple urban challenges, with rapidly increasing knowledge production requiring synthesis to better understand whether and how NbS work in different social, ecological, economic, or governance contexts. Insights in this Perspective are drawn from a thematic review of 61 NbS review articles supported by an expert assessment of NbS knowledge in seven global regions to examine key challenges, fill gaps in Global South assessment, and provide insights for scaling up NbS for impact in cities. Eight NbS challenges emerged from our review of NbS reviews including conceptual, thematic, geographic, ecological, inclusivity, health, governance, and systems challenges. An additional expert assessment reviewing literature and cases in seven global regions further revealed the following: 1) Local context-based ecological knowledge is essential for NbS success; 2) Improved technical knowledge is required for planning and designing NbS; 3) NbS need to be included in all levels of planning and governance; 4) Putting justice and equity at the center of urban NbS approaches is critical, and 5) Inclusive and participatory governance processes will be key to long-term success of NbS. We synthesized findings from the NbS review results and regional expert assessments to offer four critical pathways for scaling up NbS: 1) foster new NbS research, technological innovation, and learning, 2) build a global NbS alliance for sharing knowledge, 3) ensure a systems approach to NbS planning and implementation, and 4) increase financing and political will for diverse NbS implementation.],
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O Donnell, M.; Collier, M.J.; Pineda-Pinto, M.; Cooper, C.; Nulty, F. & Rodriguez Castañeda, N., Redefining co-design for social-ecological research and practice: A systematic literature review, Environmental Science and Policy, 164, 2025, p103998 ,
Notes: [Collaborative processes such as co-design are increasingly crucial in generating social-ecological research and practice. Fostering change within complex adaptive systems requires collaboratively working with real-world actors or stakeholders to resolve complicated issues. Co-design is a distinct and fundamental component of the co-paradigm, a collective term for co-design, co-production, and co-creation. However, scientific literature currently provides limited definitions of the key concepts within the co-paradigm, leading to misinterpretations or inconsistent usage. Improving the clarity of these definitions is essential because it permits scientific progress and better implementation of processes and engagement in practice. To address this gap, the following paper presents research which critically examines the practice of co-design through a systematic literature review. Using a systematic approach, this study identifies fifty-two papers with empirical methodologies, which are thematically analysed to understand the purpose and process of the co-design approach within social-ecological research and practice. The paper identifies effective co-design methods and discusses the implications of their utilisation within social-ecological study and practice. The review also identifies and examines definitions of co-design and the challenges of implementing a co-design approach, highlighting potential solutions. The paper concludes by proposing an integrative definition of co-design to further understand and enhance the process's implementation within social-ecological systems. The definition proposed in this paper can serve as a roadmap for researchers and practitioners aiming to use co-design as part of sustainable transformation efforts in social-ecological systems.],
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Pineda-Pinto, M.; Lennon, M.; Kennedy, C.; O"Donnell, M.; Andersson, E.; Wijsman, K. & Collier, M.J., Realizing multispecies justice through a capability approach to promote nature-based solutions, Nature Partner Journal Urban Sustainability, 7, 2025, p31 ,
Notes: [The design and implementation of nature-based solutions (NBS) in cities are often limited by an anthropocentric approach that prioritizes utilitarian goals instead of the diverse needs and abilities of multiple species that would support ecological flourishing. This paper starts from the premise that multispecies justice (MSJ) thinking provides a needed biocentric approach to NBS, and explores how a Capability Approach (CA) can be a bridge to integrate MSJ into urban NBS. The premise was tested through an embodied methodology used to design and deliver multi-city workshops in urban novel ecologies; settings often described as abandoned and hosting novel ecosystems. This research improved the understanding of participant"s awareness and knowledge of more-than-human agencies in shaping space and time, and in identifying social and environmental vulnerabilities and opportunities that can foster or hinder multispecies flourishing. We conclude by exploring how the CA can bridge NBS and MSJ and argue for the potential of marginal, less-valued novel ecologies as important elements of socially and biodiversity-rich urban futures.],
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Khalid, H.; Collier, M.J., Leveraging machine learning techniques for image classification and revealing social media insights into human engagement with urban wild spaces, Scientific Reports, 15, 2025, p24876 ,
Notes: [In recent years, machine learning models have exhibited excellent performance and far-reaching impact across domains such as fraud detection in finance, recommendation systems in e-commerce, medical imaging in healthcare, agricultural forecasting, social engagement, image classification, sentiment analysis in social media network analysis. This research explores how advanced machine learning techniques, leveraging social media data for image classification, can be used to gain deeper insights into public engagement with urban wild spaces. The study follows a two-step methodology: first, scraping image data from Instagram, Facebook, and Flickr using hashtag-based techniques focused on urban wild spaces; second, developing an experimental pipeline using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN), and Convolutional Autoencoders (CAE) to classify and evaluate the scrapped social media data. Evaluation was based on precision, recall, F-measure, and accuracy metrics. Across all three platforms, CAE consistently outperformed CNN and DBSCAN, achieving peak accuracies of 74.8% on Flickr, 70.4% on Instagram, and 62.9% on Facebook, along with balanced F-measures and high recall. CNN showed the highest precision, reaching 98.4% on Flickr, while DBSCAN provided moderate results. These findings show that machine learning effectively filters noisy data and reveals how people engage with urban wild spaces, offering valuable insights for urban planning and ecology.],
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Cook, E.M.; Kim, Y.; Grimm, N.B.; McPhearson, T.; Anderson, P.; Bulkeley, H.A.; Collier, M.J.; Diep, L.; Morató Farreras, J.; Zhou, W., Nature-based Solutions for Urban Sustainability, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 122, (29), 2025, pe2315909122 ,
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Holscher, K.; Frantzeskaki, N.; Kindlon, D.; Collier, M.J.; Dick, G.; Dziuba"a, A.; Lodder, M.; Osipiuk, A.; Quartier, M.; Schepers, S.; Van De Sijpe, K.; van der Have, C., Embedding co-production of nature-based solutions in urban governance: Emerging co-production capacities in three European cities, Environmental Science and Policy, (152), 2024, p103652 ,
Notes: [This paper seeks to understand how co-production can become embedded as a collaborative governance practice by which city governments plan, deliver, and steward nature-based solutions. To these ends, the paper analyses how policy officers manifest capacities for co-production in three European cities " Genk (Belgium), Glasgow (United Kingdom), and Poznan " (Poland) " while experimenting with co-production to develop and scale nature- based solutions. Co-production capacities include conditions and activities to (1) create space for co-production, (2) safeguard inclusive and legitimate co-production, and (3) link co-production processes and results to contexts. The results demonstrate how policy officers in the three cities have mobilised and created resources, skills, institutional support, and partnerships to implement diverse processes to co-produce nature-based solutions. While these conditions mark starting changes in urban governance, engaging with and embedding co-production causes tensions between the dynamic and diffuse nature of co-production and existing formal governance settings and processes. Lessons for strengthening the capacities to embed co-production as a collaborative governance practice in nature-based solutions planning, delivery, and stewardship are: (1) embedding a tailor-made approach for inclusive co-production to meaningfully engage diverse actors in place-based settings, (2) embedding open-ended co-production with long-term benefits, and (3) embedding new relations and roles to sustain co- production.],
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Cooper, C.; Cunningham, N.; Bracken, L.J.; Collier, M.J., Distribution of Nature-based Solutions in cities across Europe, Land Use Policy, 141, 2024, p107160 ,
Notes: [Nature-based Solutions (NBS) is a conceptual framework that seeks to use properties of nature to co-produce ecosystem services to build climate change resilience and improve quality of life by mitigating the relationship between health inequality and socio-economic adversity. This study investigates how the distribution of these forms of urban nature relate to trends in demographic change and social and economic indicators that influence material aspects of quality of life (QoL) in cities. Using macro-scale spatial mapping and descriptive pattern identification, we examine the relationship of distribution trends in the key characteristics of NBS across European cities and social and material factors that influence QoL. Our findings suggest that less than 6% of NBS aim to address poverty or deprivation and fewer than 25% relate to housing or neighbourhood regeneration. We argue inattention to the complex intersectional relationship of socio-economic disparities, historical structural conditions, and the impact of changes to the structural policy on economic convergence across regions leading to the concept being used to address green-growth imperatives in Western Europe rather than mitigate inequalities across eastern and parts of Southern Europe. Failure to address these considerations in the design and deployment of NBS could lead to cities reinforcing or even worsening inequalities within deprived communities, particularly in these areas.],
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Rodriguez Castañeda, N.; Pineda-Pinto, M.; Gulsrud, N.M.; Cooper, C.; O Donnell, M.; Collier, M.J., Exploring the restorative capacity of urban green spaces and their biodiversity through an adapted One Health approach: a scoping review, Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, 2024, p128489 ,
Notes: [The One Health framework was proposed by the World Health Organisation to explore human, animal, and environmental health interfaces using a holistic and interdisciplinary approach. Yet, the application of this framework to study urban green spaces has been poorly explored in the literature. As the amount of evidence on urban green spaces for citizens" health and well-being is increasing, the use of a One Health framework may contribute to understanding urban green spaces from a comprehensive, interrelated and multidisciplinary perspective that comprises people, biodiversity and the urban environment. To explore this gap in the literature, this study presents a scoping review which analysed 50 studies through an adapted version of the One Health framework, using the interfaces between human mental health, urban green spaces and urban biodiversity as analytical lenses. The review yielded three main findings: the restorative capacity of urban green spaces as a critical aspect of overall human health, the values of restorative capacity from having contact with urban biodiversity, and how ecological knowledge promotes biodiversity conservation in cities. This paper also discusses opportunities to continue expanding One Health by engaging with interdisciplinary discussions and cross-sectoral collaborations. We conclude with an invitation to explore and extend the One Health framework with respect to augmenting urban green spaces as restorative settings and valuing their capacity to contribute to public awareness of biodiversity and, in turn, contribute to improving human and environmental health in cities.],
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Pineda-Pinto, M.; Kennedy, C.; Nulty, F.; Collier, M.J., Leverage points for improving urban biodiversity conservation in the Anthropocene: A novel ecosystem lens for social-ecological transformation, Environmental Science and Policy, 162, 2024, p103926 ,
Notes: [Environmental governance faces persistent challenges worldwide, with traditional conservation and restoration policies often proving ineffective against ongoing environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. This is driven largely by complex regulatory procedures and an outdated understanding of ecosystem dynamics and change which often fail to effectively engage stakeholders or acknowledge the emergence and value of disturbed or novel ecosystems. This paper advocates for a paradigm shift in conventional environmental policy in the Global North to embrace ecological novelty and reevaluate conservation strategies, particularly within urban contexts. Drawing on case studies from Ireland, Australia, and the United States, it examines existing environmental legislation and identifies critical leverage points for transformative change utilizing a systems thinking and multispecies justice perspective. The findings highlight cross-cutting themes, similarities and differences across regions. We conclude with recommendations for alternative approaches to biodiversity conservation that account for the global redistribution of species and the prevalence of novel ecosystems. This may enable policymakers, practitioners and other stakeholders to envision more flexible, nimble, and adaptive policy frameworks that strive toward mutual flourishing and address the evolving challenges of the Anthropocene.],
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