Quality and the values of nature
This brings us to the second necessary definition: Namely, what is quality regarding the subject of city nature?

The quality of city nature does not depend on what it looks like. Used in this way, this purely perceived quality will be useless and simply act as greenwashing (being utterly dependent on private aesthetic notions of when something “looks right”). And in the worst case, perceived quality will be outright harmful and counteract the beneficial effects that our cities can gain through the implementation of city nature.

But what does then determine the quality of city nature? In SLA, we define a high-quality city nature on whether it performs on four values of nature. The values are equally important and ensure a holistic and broad-performing new nature.

The four values are: biological, social, rational, and aesthetic.

Biological Nature value
Biological Nature Value is about creating space within our cities and societies for ALL life – ranging from plants, animals, and humans to water, skies, bacteria, and jellyfish. We do this because high biodiversity enriches our lives, makes our cities resilient, and makes our societies healthier. And, fundamentally, because preservation and strengthening of the planet’s biodiversity, both aesthetically and ethically, is the right thing to do. We are borrowing the Earth and its resources and must return them in even better condition than when we received them. A city nature that ensures biological diversity is thus imperative.

Social Nature value
Social Nature Value consists of all the positive aspects we humans gain through exposure to city nature. We become healthier, happier, and less prone to stress by living close to nature. Furthermore, we become increasingly social, more active, and experience lower crime rates within nature-based urban spaces. The social and human potential, derived through city nature, is well documented and possesses the additional advantage that it works on everyone, regardless of their social, cultural, or gender-oriented background. City nature must therefore aspire to create better and more social human conditions for every individual within our society – both at individual and societal levels.

Rational Nature value
Rational Nature Value deals with all the ecosystem services we can derive through a well-designed city nature, contributing to increased sustainability of our cities and societies. It deals with aspects ranging from rainwater management and storm surge protection to filtration of air pollutants, regulated thermal conditions, and microclimate optimization. When we design city nature, it is thus not a matter of whether the cities become “beautiful” to look at or live within. Instead, we are correcting 200 years of urban delusions which have separated the built environment from the grown environment. To create coexistence and equality between these two factors – thus making our cities viable for the next 1000 years.

Aesthetic value
The Aesthetic Nature Value of city nature deals with the fact that we as humans are part of nature – that we are nature.

City nature reminds us explicitly of this fact through the provision of deep sensory, physical, and psychological experiences: It is when we hear the birds singing, feel the decay of the trees, smell the fresh air following torrential rain, feel the storm, suddenly see the stars in the sky and physically sense the transience of everything, that we possess the most significant potential of feeling as one with nature.

This sense of cohesion does not simply provide the individual human being with existential satisfaction. We also recognize our place on the planet – and our responsibility for it. Aesthetic city nature thus gives meaning to the life of the individual while simultaneously reminding us of our collective responsibility.

Finally, we know that aesthetic senses that turn into ethical realizations tend to lead to physical action. Through a slightly polemic rewriting of the chaos theory, one could say that the song of a blackbird at Skt. Kjeld’s Square in Copenhagen possesses greater potential for preventing sea-level rise in New York and wildfires in Australia, than many a technical report and political toasts.

Use knowledge wisely – and act!
As must be clear from the above, it is not easy to design such a city nature. Neither is it something that occurs spontaneously if we simply stop maintaining our public spaces. High-quality city nature requires extensive knowledge of biological, anthropological, social, economic, and psychological conditions. Further, it requires design expertise and the artistic ability to condense this knowledge into value-based proposals.

So dear civil society: Congratulation on becoming more aware of the importance of nature in the city. Let us now create a shared understanding of what this new approach to City Nature entails.

And let’s get to work!