CUE 2: Beyond Maintenance: Caring for Living Blue Green Urban Systems

What if maintaining urban nature meant more than mowing, pruning and keeping landscapes under control?

Urban green and blue spaces are living systems whose care can strengthen biodiversity, cooling, water retention and resilience to drought and extreme rainfall. This requires moving beyond fragmented, human-centred maintenance.

We seek municipalities, engineers, maintenance organisations, researchers, communities and financial partners to explore systemic alternatives through case studies across different countries. Together, we will investigate transformative maintenance practices, organisational and financing models, ecological knowledge and forms of community stewardship.

Key questions could include: What does maintenance mean when infrastructure is alive? Who maintains urban nature, for whom and according to whose values? How might public expectations, governance structures and worldviews change to recognise plants, animals, water and soils as urban co-inhabitants?