Nancy Grimm // Cities with nature: a roadmap for urban nature-based solutions in the United States and Canada.

This webinar is being offered as part of Nancy Grimm’s stay in Lyon (August 2026–November 2026), supported by H2O'Lyon.

Cities with nature: a roadmap for urban nature-based solutions in the United States and Canada.

« Cities in the United States (US) and Canada are experiencing escalating challenges from climate change intersecting with legacies and current realities of social inequality, ecological degradation, and aging and failing infrastructure. In response, nature-based solutions (NbS) are becoming popular strategies to address complex urban infrastructure challenges while enhancing biodiversity and human well-being in the region. Cities are increasingly directing funding, resources, and technical assistance to support the adoption of NbS to provide multiple benefits for urban residents. Yet, urban NbS in US and Canadian cities encompass diverse ecosystems, typologies, implementation scales, and governance mechanisms, with little clarity on their effectiveness in achieving particular outcomes. Based on expert consultations and examination of existing databases, we analyzed urban NbS practices across the U.S. and Canada, ranging from small-scale rain gardens and beach restorations to city-wide urban forestry and green infrastructure projects. We gathered evidence on the reporting, monitoring, and effectiveness of these solutions in addressing urban challenges. Our findings indicate that outcomes of urban nature-based solutions differ in the extent to which they meet stated NbS objectives, and vary with scales of implementation, levels of community involvement, and governance mechanisms such as leading actors, partnership models, and financial instruments available. Drawing on our analysis of cases, we propose a set of key recommendations to scale and build capacity for NbS implementation. This roadmap for urban NbS in the US-Canada region emphasizes the role of multi-actor partnerships and community engagement in scaling urban NbS in ways that foster resilience to global change, restore connectedness to nature, and promote equitable access to nature.»


Nancy Grimm is Regents Professor and Virginia M. Ullman Professor of Ecology in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University, where she currently leads a transdisciplinary graduate education initiative called Earth Systems Science for the Anthropocene. Her B.A. (1978) is from Hampshire College, and she earned her M.S. (1980) and Ph.D. (1985) from ASU. She is an affiliate of the School of Sustainability and adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico. She was founding co-director of the Central Arizona-Phoenix LTER and the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network and now directs the NATURA network of international networks. She was President and is fellow of the Ecological Society of America and the Society for Freshwater Science and is fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

She has served as an NSF program director, a staff scientist and lead author for the third National Climate Assessment and is currently an editor of PNAS and AGU’s Perspectives in Earth and Space Sciences. She is a member of numerous national and international scientific advisory boards, and an author for United By Nature, the former 6th National Climate Assessment, and the Biodiversity and Climate Change Assessment for North America. She recently held a distinguished visiting lectureship at Yale School of the Environment and was awarded the Alfred C. Redfield Lifetime Achievement Award from ASLO and the Award of Excellence from the Society for Freshwater Science.

 

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