Greening Europe's Cities: Inside the Urban Nature Plans+ Project in Paris

What is the UNP+ Project?

Under the EU Biodiversity Strategy and supported by the Nature Restoration Regulation, the European Commission has requested that towns and cities with populations over 20,000 take ambitious steps to integrate nature into urban environments. This initiative aims to restore biodiversity while recognising and supporting local community action.

Cities are being asked to develop Urban Nature Plans (UNPs) that go beyond isolated green projects. These plans should include strategic, city-wide actions such as creating biodiverse and accessible urban forests, parks, and gardens.

The UNP+ project was designed to support cities in developing and implementing these plans. A robust planning framework is being co-created and tested with five partner cities: Paris, Barcelona, Mannheim, Burgas, and Belgrade. The goal is to develop a replicable model to support cities across the EU.

Through practical tools, peer exchange, and expert guidance, UNP+ helps cities transition from ad-hoc initiatives to integrated urban nature planning. It empowers cities to create plans that are actionable, measurable, and politically supported, embedding nature as a long-term priority rather than a temporary project.

What is an Urban Nature Exchange?

One of the project’s core features is the Urban Nature Exchange. These exchanges, held both online and in person, give cities the opportunity to share experiences, discuss obstacles, and learn from one another in a collaborative environment.

In March 2025, an in-person exchange was held in Paris. City practitioners and researchers gathered for a series of interactive workshops aimed at encouraging peer-to-peer learning and the co-creation of ideas. Unlike typical best-practice presentations, these sessions prioritised open dialogue. Participants were encouraged to talk candidly about real-world challenges, explore the barriers to progress, and work together to find locally relevant solutions. This kind of collaborative exchange is vital for strengthening cities’ capacity to plan and deliver impactful urban nature strategies.

Clarifying Impacts, Outcomes, and Outputs

At the Paris exchange, a dedicated workshop focused on the strategic design of urban nature plans, with particular emphasis on defining intended results and selecting indicators to track them.

Why Clarify These Terms?

A strong UNP begins with a clear understanding of what a city wants to achieve. In our session, we worked with cities to distinguish between three key layers:

• Impacts – long-term changes (e.g. increased biodiversity)

• Outcomes – medium-term results (e.g. more butterfly species)

• Outputs – direct deliverables (e.g. more butterfly-friendly habitat)
  

This structured thinking helps cities ensure that their plans are aligned with broader strategic goals, focused on delivering genuine value, and are easier to communicate both publicly and politically. During the session, each city began by identifying its desired long-term impacts, and then worked backwards to determine what outcomes and outputs would be needed to get there.

Selecting Indicators to Measure Success

Defining goals is only the first step. Measuring progress towards them requires the right indicators, ones that are clear, measurable, and tailored to local circumstances. In Paris, participants explored how to select appropriate indicators for each level of their planning framework: impacts, outcomes, and outputs.

Cities were encouraged to balance standardised indicators, which support comparisons between cities, with more locally specific ones that better capture the value of particular interventions. The emphasis was on practicality: indicators had to be not only relevant but also feasible, given the data, tools, and resources available.

To support this process, cities drew on the Evaluating the Impact of Nature-Based Solutions handbook. This offers a broad menu of indicators, covering areas such as biodiversity, climate resilience, water management, air quality, place regeneration, green jobs, social cohesion, and public health. By connecting specific actions to a wide range of benefits, this framework helps cities demonstrate the full value of their urban nature plans.

Workshop Foundations: Connecting Nature’s Five-Step Process

The Paris session was inspired by the impact assessment guidebook developed through the Connecting Nature project. This guide proposes a five-step process for evaluating nature-based solutions:

1. Structured reflection on impacts

2. Choosing appropriate indicators

3. Developing a data plan

4. Implementing the data plan

5. Integrating evidence into policymaking
   

The session in Paris focused on the first two steps, with cities expected to continue developing their data plans later in the project.

What’s Next?

Looking ahead, the five cities involved in UNP+ will continue refining their impact maps, selecting and testing indicators, and preparing data plans that support meaningful evaluation. The lessons learned through this process will feed directly into the wider UNP+ capacity-building programme.

These real-world experiences will also inform the upcoming Urban Nature Planning+ guidance, which will provide practical support for other cities across Europe looking to create robust, integrated, and evidence-based Urban Nature Plans rooted in local ambition and environmental need.