This website focuses on the Life PACT’s approach to city replication and provides some resources for cities interested in expanding NbS in their context. You can find the main project website here.

Replication enabling resources for helping cities to increase the uptake of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) at speed and scale through collaboration with citizens and other stakeholders.

1. The project

Nature-based Solutions can strengthen urban resilience and promote the health and well-being of citizens. In the face of climate and biodiversity crises, Cities need to increase the scale and speed at which they deploy context-appropriate NbS.

Life PACT has identified three key levers to support this acceleration:
  1. Increasing participation from citizens through co-creating NbS in public and private spaces.
  2. Improving cross-departmental coordination and collaboration in city government and involving owners of private property in developing NbS.
  3. Tracking actions and impacts toward greening the city across both public and private spaces through data collection and monitoring.
Madrid site visit. Photos taken by Paula Puche for itdUPM

2. The cities

Replication efforts focus on Madrid and Krakow, who are testing how to implement the learnings from the project and develop their own unique approaches, as they implement NbS at sites around the city.

Each city has adopted and adapted the Life PACT's overarching objectives of developing and testing an integrated approach to urban climate change adaptation that draws on the efforts of multiple stakeholders -including local government, citizens, universities, and private sector actors- to more effectively deploy NbS.
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Within Life PACT, Madrid is working in the San Cristobal neighbourhood, part of the Villaverde District. In response to the socio-economic complexity of the area, Madrid decided to develop a tailored co-design methodology with local partners to address challenges identified in participatory urban design and planning. The selected sites include a primary school-yard, a neighbouring street and the outdoor spaces in the adjacent residential area.  

The main objectives are to increase green stock and refurbish public spaces to improve microclimatic conditions, increase biodiversity and create diverse, inclusive, and health-promoting areas, eventually enhancing the quality life of residents. At the same time, through innovative and collaborative practices, the aim is to increase efficiency and reduce long-term NBS system maintenance and operation costs.

Working with municipal interdepartmental teams as a living lab,  these new formulas will be reviewed at the micro-scale with a view to scaling-up across the whole city.
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The first task in Krakow was to identify potential sites around the city. To do this the city used a combination of public engagement through district councils, data analysis and a review panel. Sites were proposed and then assessed for feasibility through a network of local stakeholders that included clerks of the City of Krakow and representatives of the local community. During these meetings, the potential of each location was analysed, photographic and video documentation was prepared, and consultations were conducted. The project was also presented at open sessions of the District Councils.

A panel made up of municipal officers, the City Green Department, and three independent experts reviewed the proposed locations, established a set of criteria for selecting appropriate locations and made a final recommendation of the best locations.

Blue/green infrastructure will be implemented on the selected sites through a collaborative process of co-design with technical specialists, city government and citizens.
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Madrid
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Krakow
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3. Ingredients for replication

Cities are currently not deploying NbS at the scale and speed needed to ensure urban resilience in the face of increasing climate impacts and other challenges. Life PACT aims to develop and test an integrated approach that draws on the efforts of multiple stakeholders and can accelerate effective, widespread, contextually-relevant  NbS implementation - what we refer to as “spreading” or “replicating”.

Over the course of the project,  four key elements have emerged as critical for enabling replication and spreading:
  1. Digesting through systematising
  2. Iterative reflecting and planning
  3. Moving forward through learning enquiries
  4. Ongoing collective sense-making
These elements combine knowledge-creation and learning modes -learning-by-doing (3), reflexive learning (1 and 4) and learning-by-interacting (4)- to enable the three dimensions of  scaling (scaling-up, scaling-out and scaling deep) for system change.

The following sections provide more information on each of these elements as well as resources and links to relevant material.

3.1 Systematising

Analysing, synthesising, codifying and methodising as a way to digest project processes and findings to support learning and replication.

The Practices Guide, developed by DemSoc, was the first step toward codifying the learning from Leuven and early-stage work in Madrid and Krakow.

Learnings from the Life PACT were also used to inform a chapter on lessons from Madrid's experience with cocreation and urban nature projects written by UPM.
Access to the Practices Guide Access chapter on learnings from Madrid (coming soon)

Practices to help spread NbS

Planting the seeds for success card
E.g.: Setting the conditions for collaboration
Planting the seeds for success practices are about relationships, trust, and their critical, foundational role in helping NbS flourish. They are ‘seeds’ to plant, water and care for throughout the project journey.
Understanding the field card
E.g.: Mapping the ecosystem
Understanding the field practices are about understanding the context and wider ecosystem, identifying  where there is need for NbS  and the ongoing projects that are being implemented in a city.
Co-designing nature based solutions card
E.g.: Designing maintenance and long-term management
Co-designing NbS practices are about engaging key stakeholders in the design of NbS to take their diverse needs and capacities into account and considering the long-term implications for maintenance and funding.
Taking actions card
E.g.: Thinking and acting inclusively
Taking actions practices are about critical aspects of NbS implementation such as mobilising key stakeholders, addressing tension and conflict or striving for inclusive action.
Evaluating, learning and reflecting card
E.g.: Assessing NbS impact
Evaluating, learning and reflecting practices are about assessing NbS processes and their impact as well as ensuring ongoing learning and reflection.
Making it the new normal card
E.g.: Building competence and confidence in NbS
Making it the new normal practices are about shifting mindsets, providing training and capability building, as well as innovating and strengthening structures and institutions.

3.2 Reflecting and planning

Cyclical moments of looking back and looking forward to make sure ongoing learning feeds into project progress.

The NbS City Replication Plans, developed by Dark Matter Labs, build on the Practices Guide and aim to support a dynamic process of planning, learning and reflection into project implementation. The proposed resources were first tested with Madrid and Krakow as part of project activities in 2022 and 2023.

NbS City Replication Plans

To support city teams working to implement NbS at scale, Dark Matter Labs has created a Step by Step Guide and simple templates for ongoing, reflective planning. These are designed to be used with key stakeholders for comprehensive planning at the start of the NbS project, and then periodically throughout the process to promote learning, check progress, and make changes when necessary.

The Step by Step Guide and Templates are meant to be used together either online (in Miro) or using a printed version in person.
Download the Step by Step Guide
Access the templates in Miro Download the templates (PDF)

3.3 Learning enquiries

Topic-specific deep dives to address key aspects of the project and embed knowledge and capacity development through learning by doing.

Learning enquiries focusing on participatory maintenance and monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) have been explored with Madrid.

Action-oriented, simple indicators

As part of the MEL Deep Dive, Dark Matter Labs supported the city in developing a series of very simple indicators that would be easy to apply, understand and consider in decision making.

Quite often, the issue cities face when dealing with data has more to do with navigating overabundance and complexity than with a lack of information.

Cities often have a large number of complex indicators, developed by research teams or topic experts, to measure and monitor everything from urban climate, vulnerability, and mobility trends to the use of public space. While these indicators play a fundamental role in increasing the understanding of our cities through data that is rooted in robust methodologies, local authorities sometimes struggle to use the indicators consistently, beyond a specific pilot or project, and to then use what the indicator is telling them to make decisions in their day to day work.

In response, Madrid and Dark Matter Labs partnered to defined a small number of simple indicators and a supporting tool (spreadsheet) that could be tested with design teams and municipal employees, then iterated and refined.

The first version of the spreadsheet and a supporting presentation can be downloaded below.
Download our report Download the draft tool

3.4 Sense-making

Moments of coming together to share findings, learnings, questions and challenges in order to gain greater individual and collective clarity by collecting, discussing, interrogating and building upon each other’s insights. This process can happen around any of the three other elements which act as sense-making enablers, operationalising the process of giving meaning to experience.

Madrid and Krakow partners came together mid process to learn more about each other’s work, and engage together in reflection and planning facilitated by Dark Matter Labs.
To see more Life PACT material created to increase cities’ ability to deploy and improve nature-based solutions visit the main website, below.

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