13. Envisioning green cities to support justice and wellbeing for all

The wellbeing and health of nature and humans are deeply interconnected; but often tackled separately in urban planning. Access to wellbeing and health benefits for a diversity of urban residents, both people and other species, is often overlooked. While the green structure of cities could act as a unifying factor to support this plurality of needs, its potential is not sufficiently recognized, and its existence is threatened in densifying cities. Although the wellbeing and health benefits of urban greenery are known, the current decision-making processes engage a narrowed representation of residents risking creating unjust outcomes. To plan our City of Hope, we need to consider multispecies wellbeing and their diversity of needs in relation to urban nature.

We therefore ask, how can we promote justice and multispecies wellbeing in our green infrastructure, i.e., considering the interconnected and conflicting needs of people and other species? How can we build hope by better addressing the different needs, grievances and values of diverse urban residents? How can we support planning of green spaces that promote multispecies wellbeing while simultaneously responding to global challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss? What kind of quantitative and qualitative criteria should we use, what knowledge and concrete tools do we need in planning? This will allow us to start envisioning our future cities that nurture the shared wellbeing of diverse people and other species.

We invite researchers and practitioners from different fields to reflect how their work shapes a hopeful future of urban nature where justice and wellbeing is strengthened. These include planning and management of multispecies city, participatory approaches to support inclusion and equality or studies that investigate social, environmental and multi-species justice.

We welcome presentations in both Finnish and English.