Special Issue on NBS for Historic Urban Landscapes

Introduction:

Historic Urban Landscapes (HULs) are layered environments shaped by the long-term interaction between natural systems, built form, cultural heritage, spatial practices, governance, and everyday life. Following the UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape Recommendation, HULs should not be understood as static heritage ensembles or isolated monuments, but as dynamic urban landscapes in which tangible and intangible heritage, ecological processes, spatial structures, and communities are deeply interconnected. This makes HULs culturally significant and spatially distinctive, but also highly vulnerable to climate change, urbanisation pressure, and socio-economic transformation.

This special issue focuses on the role of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) in Historic Urban Landscapes from a landscape architecture perspective. NBS are increasingly recognised as important instruments for climate adaptation, biodiversity enhancement, water management, heat reduction, and the improvement of urban liveability. Yet their application in HULs remains conceptually and practically challenging. Historic districts often have dense urban fabrics, protected structures, archaeological layers, vulnerable materials, established social practices, and strict conservation regulations. Standardised NBS approaches therefore cannot simply be inserted into historic environments; they require careful design interpretation, heritage sensitivity, and governance alignment.

Topics covered:

1. Conceptual and theoretical answers: How can NBS be redefined, adapted, or expanded for Historic Urban Landscapes? Contributions may explore heritage-sensitive NBS, landscape-based resilience, adaptive heritage landscapes, socio-ecological continuity, and the relationship between preservation and transformation.
2. Design and spatial-strategic answers: How can NBS be designed within dense, protected, and culturally layered urban fabrics? Contributions may present design principles, typologies, spatial strategies, and cross-scale approaches for integrating water, vegetation, soil, public space, biodiversity, and heritage values.
3. Methodological and digital answers: How can assessment tools, mapping methods, design research, climate modelling, heritage inventories, and participatory platforms support NBS in HULs? Contributions may examine ways to combine climate risk data, urban morphology, cultural values, ecological performance, and social vulnerability.
4. Governance, implementation, and justice-oriented answers: How can NBS in HULs be implemented through inclusive governance, regulation, living labs, pilot projects, and community engagement? Contributions may address institutional barriers, regulatory conflicts, stewardship models, distributive justice, and the risk of green gentrification.

Important deadlines:

Submission deadline: October 31st, 2026

Publication date: March 2027

Submission instructions:

Please read the Guide for Authors before submitting. All articles should be submitted online, please select [NBS for Historic Urban Landscapes] on submission.

Guest editors: 

Prof. Steffen Nijhuis, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. Email: S.Nijhuis@tudelft.nl

Prof. Yimin Sun, South China University of Technology, China. Email: arymsun@scut.edu.cn