Participatory nature-driven urbanism: a pathway to achieving SDG-11 through community-led action

Abstract

With escalating climate risks and environmental degradation, cities are struggling to meet the criteria of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG-11): Sustainable Cities and Communities. Conventionally, urban planning approaches have often overlooked community participation, traditional ecological knowledge, and the potential of nature-based solutions. This manuscript proposes that the Nature-Driven Urbanism (NDU) paradigm, centred around participatory governance and community-led ecological initiatives, be used as a transformative approach to help cities achieve SDG-11. Through an exploration of NDU principles and illustrative examples drawn from a variety of global urban contexts, this article examines how urban socio-ecological systems (USES) can flourish when local residents are at the core of decision-making. The review comprehensively demonstrates that integrating communities into decision-making processes through participatory NDU is crucial for cultivating USES that are more resilient to climate change, and are increasingly inclusive, liveable, and biodiverse. This critical shift from centralised, top-down urban planning towards decentralised community-based ecological governance models is therefore not merely an option but a strategic imperative for the future of urban sustainability. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2025.