This introductory textbook with a global scope aims to train students of geography, sustainability, and urban and environmental studies to re-imagine and transform cities to meet climate, biodiversity, and sustainability challenges. A dedicated team of authors critically examine the relationships between nature and urban areas, sharing an inspiring account of how nature helps us re-think our cities and their futures. Prior to this textbook, literature for courses covering urban nature was written by and for practitioners, whereas this textbook is written by experienced course instructors specifically to be accessible to diverse students. The textbook is illustrated with numerous photos and figures which bring key topics, challenges, and opportunities to life. It contains focus boxes and case studies from every continent, offering students an international scope and multiple entry points into the field. Chapters conclude with thought-provoking follow-up questions and recommended reading. The authors provide an array of supplementary online resources.
Kes McCormick is a Professor of Business Development and Sustainable Innovation in the Department of People and Society at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. He also holds a position at the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) at Lund University. With a background in political science and environmental science, he engages in a combination of research, education, and collaboration activities on sustainability, business, innovation, and governance, including A Research Agenda for Sustainable Cities and Communities (Edward Elgar, 2023) He is deeply engaged in online and in-person education, capacity building, and lifelong learning, including through Massive Open Online Courses. Bernadett Kiss is a Lecturer and Researcher at the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) at Lund University. For the past twenty years she has been working in the field of sustainable urban development and climate change, with special focus on urban governance, energy efficiency in the built fabric, policy and technology change, innovation systems, learning, and nature-based solutions. Bernadett's recent interest lies in interdisciplinary education, the integration of research and education, and the application of knowledge co-creation through urban stakeholders' engagement. Yuliya Voytenko Palgan is an Associate Professor and Director of PhD Education at the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) at Lund University. She has over fifteen years of experience in multicultural, multidisciplinary, and interdisciplinary teams. She works in the areas of sustainability, urban governance, innovation, and sustainable consumption. Her research focuses on strategies for sustainability solutions in new economies (for example the bioeconomy, the sharing economy, and the circular economy) and sustainable urban transformation (for example nature-based solutions in cities and urban living labs). Yuliya works to promote education for sustainability at all levels: graduate, undergraduate, and professional. Harriet Bulkeley holds joint appointments at Durham University and Utrecht University. Her research focuses on environmental governance and the politics of climate change, nature, and sustainable cities, including An Urban Politics of Climate Change (Routledge, 2015) and Accomplishing Climate Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2016). She was awarded the King Carl XVI Gustaf's Professorship in Environmental Science in 2014 and the Royal Geographical Society Back Award in 2018 in recognition of the policy impact of her work on climate change. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2019 and appointed to the Scientific Council of the European Research Council in 2023. McKenna Davis is a Senior Fellow at the Ecologic Institute in Berlin, Germany, and coordinates the Institute's activities on nature-based solutions. Her work looks at the assessment of green infrastructure and nature-based solutions (NBS) and their governance frameworks, with a focus on linkages to human health and well-being, sustainable urban development, biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation, and disaster risk reduction. She has published numerous papers and book chapters and led the development of the Urban Governance Atlas (https://interlace-hub.com/urban-governance-atlas), showcasing more than 250 global policy instruments supporting NBS. She is an expert in the Biodiversa BiodivClim Knowledge Hub on the 'Potential of NBS for mitigating and adapting to climate change'. Rob Raven is an interdisciplinary scholar, professor of sustainability transitions, and deputy director (research) at Monash Sustainable Development Institute. His current research agenda is focused on the analysis of transformative change in urban contexts such as smart, sustainable, and net-zero cities. In 2022, Rob was included in Elsevier's top 2% of the most influential researchers in the world across all scientific disciplines, and in 2023 in the Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher list. Rob is an editor for the journals Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, Global Sustainability, and Nature Urban Sustainability. A key focus of his work is how actors, socio-technical experimentation, institutional change, and incumbency in urban regimes co-produce sustainable city futures. Andres Luque-Ayala is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Durham University. He is an urban geographer and infrastructures scholar, focusing on the environmental governance of 'smart city' agendas and the digitisation of urban ecological flows. His work critically unpacks the role of digital technologies in how cities respond to climate change, through a research agenda that also examines how urban digital technologies rework notions of nature, particularly in response to the challenges posed by the urban Anthropocene. He is the co-author of Urban OS: Reassembling the City through Computational Logics (with S. Marvin, MIT University Press, 2020). Kathrin Hoerschelmann is Professor of Geography at the University of Bonn, where she leads the Cultural Geography Research Group. Her research focusses on the geographies of citizenship and participation, cultural geography, urban inclusion, youth identity, security, globalization, and post-socialist change. In addition to numerous well-cited papers in international peer reviewed journals such as Transactions of the IBG, Progress in Human Geography, Political Geography and Antipode, she has published the textbook Children, Youth and the City (with van Blerk, Routledge, 2011) as well as several edited collections and special issues, including Research Ethics for Human Geography (with Henn and Miggelbrink, Routledge, 2022).
Autor*in
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Lund University
Lund University
Lund University
Durham University, University of Utrecht
Ecologic Institute
Monash University
Durham University
Leibniz-Institut fuer Laenderkunde
1. Introduction & Overview; Part I. Understanding Perspectives: 2. Conceptualising; 3. Valuing; 4. Developing; Part II. Enabling Processes: 5. Governing; 6. Financing; 7. Innovating; Part III. Navigating Pathways: 8. Politicising; 9. Co-creating; 10. Mainstreaming.
