MAKING NATURE’S CITY
TOOLKIT

The health of humans and ecosystems is fundamentally linked and reciprocal.

By nurturing our relationship with nature in cities, we forge a path towards fostering healthy, resilient communities.
Why Make Nature’s City:
Thriving ecosystems are vital to human health and resilience in cities.

Cities are wrestling with a multitude of complex and interconnected challenges that will only intensify over the coming decades, from adapting to a changing climate to accommodating rapid population growth. A related suite of challenges threatens biodiversity and ecosystems on a global scale.

For centuries, urban planners and conservationists have treated these issues as distinct, and even often at odds. Nature has been the antithesis of cities, to be restrained, tamed, and sterilized, whether behind concrete or within designated parks.

What we know now is that this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Now, the tide is turning. Cities are grasping the power of nature to adapt, heal, and restore. Research and practice increasingly affirm that nurturing our relationship with nature in turn tends to the health and wellbeing of our communities. We are learning that cities are safe harbors for a significant fraction of the world’s biodiversity, while biodiverse ecosystems in cities provide tremendous benefits to people, from soothing and restoring our mental and physical health to protecting our cities from extreme threats like climate change.

By thoughtfully inviting nature into the design of our cities, we have the power to implement integrative solutions that make cities more livable and resilient for all–people, plants, and animals alike.
How can we see the forest for the trees, and see the forest for the city?
Rebuilding the reciprocal relationship between cities and nature will require envisioning urban spaces in new and creative ways.

SFEI has developed two foundational frameworks – Making Nature’s City and Ecology for Health – that guide cities towards fostering the mutual health and resilience of people and nature.

Making Nature’s City
A science-based framework for building urban biodiversity
Making Nature’s City synthesizes global research into a science-based approach for supporting nature in cities. The approach, called the Urban Biodiversity Framework, identifies just seven landscape elements that work together to maximize biodiversity.

Using the Urban Biodiversity Framework, cities can create their vision for coexisting with nature. By bringing together diverse groups, including designers, planners, engineers, residents, cities can connect the landscape through local parks, greenways, street trees, stormwater basins, and commercial and residential landscaping to support both functioning urban ecosystems and healthier communities.

Ecology for Health
Design guidance for fostering human health and biodiversity in cities
Building on the Urban Biodiversity Framework developed in Making Nature’s City, Ecology for Health presents urban design guidance for local communities and design professionals to maximize the value that urban spaces generate for both native biodiversity and human health. 

The guide is geared towards supporting urban designers and planners.  It focuses on three scales: urban planning, site design, and detailed design. Within each scale, it offers practical strategies to create urban green areas that resolve tradeoffs and maximize benefits between biodiversity conservation and human health support.

Now, let’s work together to “Make Nature’s City.”
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