Urban sustainable futures: concepts and policies leading to BioCities

BioCities are strongly linked to evolving contemporary concepts that have become an integral part of the urban discourse around multi-scale policy making. Urban communities are searching for new ideas for developing a sustainable future (Calhoun 2012). This includes concepts such as urban forest, ecosystem services, green infrastructure, ecosystem-based adaptation, nature-based solutions (FAO 2016; Pauleit et al. 2017; Escobedo et al. 2019), nature’s contributions to people (Managi et al. 2022), and nature-based thinking (Randrup et al. 2020). Many of these concepts have been adopted in the European Union (EU) urban policy framework based on the declared recognition of bringing nature back to cities and reward community action.