ABSTRACT
Population growth, the climate crisis, resource depletion and pollution are all major global challenges facing humankind and nowhere is this more acute than in the city. There is an urgent need to create more sustainable and resilient development. Nature-based solutions can deliver multiple environmental, social and economic benefits. Yet nature is something taken for granted in urban environments. While the benefits of nature are widely understood by landscape architects, ecologists, planners and many others in the environmental fields, these benefits are not necessarily appreciated in the mainstream, and are frequently underplayed in conventional economic analyses. Through a wide range of real-life examples and lessons learned, this book argues the case for delivering nature-based solutions as a cost-effective, mainstream planning and design activity, so that their benefits can be readily realised and measured. It demystifies many of the perceptions surrounding nature-based solutions to show that green infrastructure is fundamentally good value for money.
