CUE topic 1: Resilient green and social infrastructure

Green infrastructure - natural areas, parks, waterway corridors, urban food systems, and integrated green-blue spaces - provides critical urban services like stormwater management, reduction of heat stress, biodiversity, food production, and climate mitigation and adaptation, as well as serve as vital communal resources. These multifunctional spaces enhance urban resilience, and are important for urban water cycles, short food supply chains, biodiversity, ecological stability, and climate mitigation and adaptation, whilst also enhancing community wellbeing, health and social cohesion. When designed as accessible to people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities, they have the potential to foster interaction and shared experiences, in providing opportunities for physical activity, social connection, spiritual needs and an escape to nature.

The potential of social infrastructure and its role in urban sustainability transitions is often undervalued. Budgetary constraints and economic rationalisation are often prioritised. However, social infrastructure, which includes cultural and community infrastructure as well as public spaces, is integral to urban life, connecting communities, and offering opportunities for socioecological interventions and interactions. It is essential for the functioning of society and fosters social interactions that make life in cities liveable and worthwhile. This is integral to social cohesion, and avoiding existing patterns of inequality and exclusion, in favour for a more just urban transition. Such spaces can include community housing, universities, schools, preschools, libraries, sports, leisure and recreation facilities, spiritual and religious centres, museums and cultural institutions, cafes and restaurants.

Challenges arise when urban development treats this infrastructure separately, missing opportunities for integrated solutions, fostering circularity. By not considering this infrastructure’s combined environmental, social and economic benefits, urban planning risks overlooking the full potential of this infrastructure to drive climate mitigation and resilience, and social equity. This topic underscores the need to emphasise the combined social, cultural and environmental roles and benefits of green and social infrastructure, highlighting its pivotal contribution to climate mitigation and resilience, social equity and urban transitions.

Proposals under this topic must seek innovative approaches to integrating green and social infrastructure into urban contexts. Projects should consider how green infrastructure offers opportunity for improved community wellbeing and health by providing inclusive and accessible spaces for physical activity, sport, leisure, recreation, relaxation, spiritual experiences and social interaction, contributing to social equity. Similarly, it is crucial that projects focusing on social infrastructure solidly integrate green elements to enhance biodiversity and ecological resilience in urban areas. The emphasis of this topic is on the benefits of combining the ecological and infrastructural qualities of green spaces, along with the socially cohesive qualities of social infrastructure, to create multifunctional spaces that address social, cultural and environmental challenges, fostering integrated and sustainable communities. Furthermore, proposals can address how inclusively designed and well-maintained green infrastructure promotes urban resilience by mitigating heat islands, improving air quality, supporting local ecosystems, as well as increasing biodiversity, food production and security, clean water and healthy soil in a way that can also mitigate climate change.

Moreover, it is crucial to focus on how targeted investments and policies can unlock the potential of underutilised social infrastructure spaces, transforming these into hubs for community engagement and ecological restoration. The long-term success of green infrastructure that depends on integrated governance and management approaches and coordinated efforts across different sectors and stakeholders is also important to this topic. Collaboration among policymakers, urban planners, architects, designers, cultural and creative sectors, advocacy groups and local communities is essential for designing and maintaining integrated infrastructure that balances social, cultural and environmental priorities.

Project proposals submitted under this topic should address one or several of the following issues:

• Enhancing biodiversity and public use: How can prioritising specific plant and animal species in urban green spaces enhance biodiversity while ensuring accessibility and functionality for public use?
• Supporting health and wellbeing: How does well-designed green and social infrastructure, for example, improve physical and mental health, reduce loneliness, and promote social interaction and community engagement?
• Combining ecological and social purposes: What strategies and governance models can effectively combine green and social infrastructure to create multifunctional spaces that serve both ecological and social needs?
• Governance and management for sustainability: What effective management practices, internal organisational reforms, cross-sector collaboration and participatory planning practices are necessary to ensure sustainable and resilient urban ecosystems?
• Nature-based solutions (NBS) for climate mitigation and adaptation: How can NBS, such as wetlands restoration and flood resistant green spaces, help cities mitigate and adapt to climate change towards climate neutrality, while serving social functions?
• Inclusive and resilient design: How can green urban spaces be designed to be inclusive, ensuring accessibility for all socioeconomic groups and people of all abilities, and at all locations? How can resilient spaces be co-created using design and artistic practices?

Rather than focusing on isolated technical solutions, projects are expected to approach this topic through systems thinking, place-based and human-driven strategies related to this topic. Project outcomes should be both impact-oriented and process-driven, aiming to be as concrete and user-centred as possible. Projects should clearly define their expected outputs in relation to the chosen question. Expected outputs include, but are not limited to:

• Approaches for the design and management of green areas, and community and cultural spaces, for enhanced social and ecological benefits.
• Creating innovative planning and design models and frameworks for integrating green and/or social infrastructure in urban planning and design to improve biodiversity, resilience and accessibility.
• Advancing community-centred solutions and strategies for fostering local participation and ensuring inclusive, socially cohesive resilient urban spaces.
• Producing policy, governance and management recommendations for policymakers on governance models and financing mechanisms, to support transformative resilient and inclusive infrastructure initiatives.
• Developing climate adaptation and mitigation strategies using NBS that enhance urban resilience, towards climate neutrality and against extreme climate events and other climate change impacts, whilst allowing for social functionality and accessibility.
• Designing methods for the co-creation of inclusive, accessible, green and climate neutral urban spaces.