Methods and Tools for Mainstreaming Nature-based Solutions in Urban Planning

This thesis addresses three interlinked aspects that are relevant for mainstreaming Nature-based Solutions in urban planning. The first aspect concerns the integration and use of ecosystem service knowledge in spatial planning. A literature review aimed at analysing practical applications of ecosystem services in real-life planning processes and instruments reveals both the outcomes generated and the procedures adopted to integrate them, as well as the main advantages, constraints, enabling factors, and open issues associated with ecosystem service knowledge integration in spatial planning processes and instruments. The second aspect is related to the use of spatial assessments of ecosystem service demand to support an effective planning of Nature-based Solutions at the city scale. An approach is developed to allocate and prioritize Nature-based Solutions in cities in order to deliver ecosystem services for addressing the existing urban challenges while maximising the benefits for residents. The approach is tested in the case study area of Valletta (Malta), identifying the potential sites for the implementation of eleven types of Nature-based Solutions, assessing the demand for five priority ecosystem services, and identifying what type(s) of Nature-based Solutions, among the eleven proposed, should be implemented in each potential site, as well as the sites that should be prioritized first. The third aspect involves the promotion of the implementation of Nature-based Solutions in urban plans through the use of suitable policy instruments. A matrix that links the suitable instruments identified to different typologies of Nature-based Solutions reveals the range of instruments that can be deployed to promote the implementation of each type of Nature-based Solution. The matrix is then applied to analyse which instruments are currently deployed and which are not in the two urban plans covering the case study area of Valletta, hence the missing opportunities that could be further exploited.