Heat stress is the primary cause of climate-related deaths in the WHO European Region, and it has risen by 30% over the past 20 years. In urban areas, research highlights the importance of integrating health and climate change adaptation strategies to reduce the health risks, including those associated with extreme heat events. To enhance urban climate resilience, the development of green-blue infrastructure (GBI), which is an interconnected network of nature-based solutions (NbS), has been encouraged. NbS are, in their turn, interventions inspired by nature that not only support nature but also benefit humans socially, environmentally and economically. Research shows that while NbS provide co-benefits, they can also increase inequalities and limit opportunities for vulnerable groups, which have already been confirmed to have higher heat-related health risks.
The Horizon Europe ARCADIA project (TrAnsformative climate ResilienCe by nAture-baseD solutions in the contInentAl bio-geographical region) aims to galvanise climate resilience through NbS in 8 regions in 8 European countries. The core of the project are co-innovation labs currently being organised in regions and cities such as Malmö (SE), Odense (DK), Zagreb (HR) and Amstetten (AT). The goal is to test and to co-develop NbS to make urban environments more resilient to extreme weather events. The ambition is to bring outcomes from the co-innovation labs to regional political agendas.
Justice is a key topic the ARCADIA project is paying particular attention. The results of the report “Principles for just and equitable nature-based solutions and green-blue infrastructure” (Mottaghi et al., 2024) set the foundation for the project when it comes to issues such as access to GBI, or potential land use conflicts and trade-offs with NbS. The report concludes that there is a critical need for a perspective change on justice, viewing it as a dynamic process rather than a by-product of NbS.
Considering a multi-dimensional notion of justice (distributional, procedural, and recognitional), this paper will present a series of insights from the on-going ARCADIA co-innovation labs. It will particularly focus on how the cities and regions in the ARCADIA project plan to utilise NbS to respond to heat and, ultimately, foster urban health.

Biodiversity loss is a global challenge, but mitigation actions need to be taken locally. Novel solutions are needed to restore biodiversity where habitats are lost due to urbanization. The Urban Biodiversity Parks project (funded by EU-UIA) applies an experimental approach to tackling biodiversity loss. In addition to the establishing the main urban biodiversity park in Skanssi area in Turku, Finland, the biodiversity park concept is partly replicated in two sub-urban neighborhoods. This research concerns the sub-urban neighborhoods, Jyrkkälä and Halinen, which differ in size and composition but hold similar socio-economic challenges, with differently perceived levels of community dynamics.

Technocratic and traditional approaches to address environmental challenges risk stabilising or even exacerbating socio-spatial inequalities if the plurality of values of space and interrelationships between social and ecological problems are not addressed. Further, urban regeneration practices frequently lack citizen engagement in development and implementation of interventions, leaving citizens outside of decision-making processes. To tackle this, the project applies a strong focus on community engagement, with diverse groups participating in the planning and implementation of local Nature-Based solutions. Through a citizen survey, we have researched the citizens` perceptions of community, socio-ecological values, and preference of nature-based solutions and local community-building activities. Our results demonstrate how residents perceive community dynamics, where they spent time in the neighbourhood, and the type of NBS and participatory nature management activities they prefer.

Understanding participation as a context-specific process based on the goals of the spatial intervention, the survey data provides the baseline for co-developing the NbS interventions. While increasing focus is put on how citizens may participate in the planning and implementation of NbS, it is not clear how the local context can effectively be utilised in the process. This presentation highlights how a place-based co-creation process for NbS planning can support its social sustainability aims, contributing to more inclusive urban regeneration. This research ultimately supports co-creating NbS and increasing biodiversity based on local knowledge and placemaking practices. The implementation of the nature-based-solutions will take place in 2025 & 2026, aiming to create solutions that live on past the duration of the project, contributing to neighborhood identity.

Water fountains and misting systems are becoming increasingly common on urban streets. These urban water features can be understood as a type of urban green and blue infrastructure, that provide a variety of services fostering human health and well-being. Examples of benefits that urban water features deliver include heat mitigation, drinking water provision and the improvement of quality of stay in public places. As small-scale urban infrastructures, urban water features can be deliberately created and placed by urban planning. This, however, creates specific spatial consequences with health and justice implications. Therefore, this research explicitly engages with the institutional framework under which urban water features are planned and located. Using Vienna as a case study we analyse the planning processes that lead to the creation of water features in urban public spaces. The guiding research question is: “How do institutions influence the planning and distribution of urban water features by the city administration of Vienna?”. Planning theory, precisely New Institutionalism combined with an Environmental Justice Perspective constitutes the theoretical approach for this research endeavour. In terms of the methodological approach, a qualitative case-study research design allows for a holistic engagement with the planning system in its Austrian context. The research integrates an analysis of relevant planning documents with semi-structured expert interviews with representatives of six different Magistratsabteilungen (units of the Viennese city administration) involved in urban water feature planning. This research is located at the nexus between urban blue infrastructures, urban planning, justice and human health and well-being. Through looking at the structures and institutions of planning, an attempt is made to understand its processes and outcomes, specifically regarding the just or unjust distribution of health and well-being-supportive urban infrastructures.

Ill mental health is among the global leading causes for poor health status affecting all socio-economic demographic groups. To lower the burden of poor mental health, cost-effective health-intervention strategies for mental health disorders are high priority. An extensive amount of research underpins the knowledge that interaction with natural environments can have positive effects on mental health, linked to specific characteristics such as amount, accessibility and quality of green and bluespace. Still the use of nature-based interventions (NBI) is not incorporated as a substantive resource in the individualized treatment of mental illness or to improve public mental health and well-being. The aim of this study was to investigate stakeholders’ views and knowledge of landscape characteristics, both among decision-makers responsible for planning urban landscapes for health, and among implementers who use naturalistic landscapes to provide nature-based health interventions. This to reveal if the view of characteristics differs between policy makers or implementers, between different countries, and between stakeholders and research-based recommendations.

As part of the international GreenME project, semi-structured interviews were conducted with policy and decision-makers, NGOs and NBI-providers in seven countries. The stakeholders’ views on environmental characteristics supporting NBI for mental health were recorded and transcribed, and data processed using thematic analysis. With focus on data coded to describe Area characteristics, relevant relationships to other themes in the data were identified using co-occurrence network analysis, that were qualitative interpreted to identifying patterns informing the result.

Our findings identified how actors at different decision and NBI-provider levels describe different landscape types, characteristics and functions that they consider to be relevant, or not, to support different types of NBI for mental health. Aspects of importance to different categories of stakeholders are identified and similarities and differences between stakeholder groups and countries, were compared and discussed. Within- and between-country results bridge the gap between existing research evidence and applied practice, while deepening understanding of region-specific aspects of practical relevance to physical planning, design and management of urban nature-based environments, which can inform policy and decision making, guidelines, as well as planning-, design and management processes to support NBI for mental health.