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Global urbanization over the last century has concentrated people, infrastructure, and economic activity in cities, pushing them to the front lines of damaging impacts of climate change and other social and economic shocks, including COVID-19. This knowledge frontier is key to standardize the diverse knowledge of NBS and strengthen knowledge translation with more rigorous examination of emerging NBS types and designs. NBS needs to be a key component of recommendations in the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report for climate adaptation in cities and to formulate pathways for nature-positive futures that can be taken up in national and local level agendas where climate resilience planning is rapidly taking place. [Extracted from the article]

Nature-based solutions offer an exciting prospect for resilience building and advancing urban planning to address complex urban challenges simultaneously. In this article, we formulated through a coproduction process in workshops held during the first IPCC Cities and Climate Science Conference in Edmonton, Canada, in March 2018, a series of synthesis statements on the role, potential, and research gaps of nature-based solutions for climate adaptation and mitigation. We address interlocking questions about the evidence and knowledge needed for integrating nature-based solutions into urban agendas. We elaborate on the ways to advance the planning and knowledge agenda for nature-based solutions by focusing on knowledge coproduction, indicators and big data, and novel financing models. With this article, we intend to open a wider discussion on how cities can effectively mainstream nature-based solutions to mitigate and adapt to the negative effects of climate change and the future role of urban science in coproducing nature-based solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban ecology is a field encompassing multiple disciplines and practical applications and has grown rapidly. However, the field is heterogeneous as a global inquiry with multiple theoretical and conceptual frameworks, variable research approaches, and a lack of coordination among multiple schools of thought and research foci. Here, we present an international consensus on how urban ecology can advance along multiple research directions. There is potential for the field to mature as a holistic, integrated science of urban systems. Such an integrated science could better inform decisionmakers who need increased understanding of complex relationships among social, ecological, economic, and built infrastructure systems. To advance the field requires conceptual synthesis, knowledge and data sharing, cross-city comparative research, new intellectual networks, and engagement with additional disciplines. We consider challenges and opportunities for understanding dynamics of urban systems. We suggest pathways for advancing urban ecology research to support the goals of improving urban sustainability and resilience, conserving urban biodiversity, and promoting human well-being on an urbanizing planet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The circumstances under which different ecosystem service benefits can be realized differ. The benefits tend to be coproduced and to be enabled by multiple interacting social, ecological, and technological factors, which is particularly evident in cities. As many cities are undergoing rapid change, these factors need to be better understood and accounted for, especially for those most in need of benefits. We propose a framework of three systemic filters that affect the flow of ecosystem service benefits: the interactions among green, blue, and built infrastructures; the regulatory power and governance of institutions; and people's individual and shared perceptions and values. We argue that more fully connecting green and blue infrastructure to its urban systems context and highlighting dynamic interactions among the three filters are key to understanding how and why ecosystem services have variable distribution, continuing inequities in who benefits, and the long-term resilience of the flows of benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the aspects of considering workspaces to improve the ecosystem-service (ES) assessment combined with decision-support tools in urban systems. It explores the aspects of the research frontiers discovered by researchers which include the complex dynamic of ES considering space and time, the association between ES provision and human well-being, and the determination of technological potential to enhance or substitute ES.