Knowledge facilitates reflexive urban governance of nature-based solutions in Australian and European cities

Abstract

Global climate change and its impacts on the liveability of urban environments mean we must examine the governance processes that design, plan, and manage our cities to build climate resilience. This is critical as existing policies and approaches to make cities more resilient have not embedded system-wide change. In this chapter, we argue that the underlying knowledge processes that can create resilient cities by applying or implementing nature-based solutions are important to unpack to deepen the understanding of reflexive urban governance processes. We aim to better understand how knowledge(s) can facilitate processes of reflexive urban governance of nature-based solutions in diverse governance contexts by examining two case studies: urban forestry governance in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia, and Trikala’s Urban Agriculture Initiative, Greece.