Strategies for mainstreaming nature-based solutions in urban planning in ten European cities

Abstract This paper identifies and examines the strategies and governance conditions by which ten European cities have started mainstreaming nature-based solutions (NBS) as innovative systemic solutions in urban planning. The three sets of mainstreaming strategies focus on how teams of policy entrepreneurs within the cities experimented with innovative governance processes and mechanisms to strategically develop procedures, knowledge, skills, and relationships to integrate (a) a systems’ approach to link NBS to policies, regulations, and departments across goals and sectors, (b) inclusive collaborations for localised interventions, and (c) reflexivity and learning about how they interact with the (institutional, ecological, social, etc.) contexts and create impacts. The strategies demonstrate how starting from NBS as a type of systemic innovation can help promote shifts in urban planning to address complex sustainability problems in cities, and how starting points and specific processes depend on a respective city’s contexts and needs.