Urban biodiversity is more than a pleasant backdrop; it’s working infrastructure. When we design to integrate habitat and not just add “green”, there are multiple returns. The benefits include cooler microclimates, flood mitigation, cleaner air and water, richer public life, and a deeper sense of place. 

Crucially, those outcomes don’t arrive by accident. They come from projects that start with ecology, make water visible, connect patches into networks, and match long-term stewardship with community benefit. We meander through former Holcim Foundation Awards winners to show how cities can move from decorating with biophilic décor to benefiting from biocentric systems.

Shift to habitat-led green

Urban Nature Project, Natural History Museum | United Kingdom

Important biodiversity gains come from creating habitat quality and structure: layered planting, living soils, wet edges, deadwood, and year-round resources. Evidence shows that boosting vegetation complexity is one of the most effective levers available to support urban biodiversity. Adding shrub and under-storey layers alongside modest water areas correlates with higher urban bird richness and presence [1]. 

The Urban Nature Project at London’s Natural History Museum transforms five acres of gardens. It will become a mosaic of British habitats and learning landscapes that will improve accessibility and boost biodiversity. The transformation provides woodland, grassland, scrub, heath, fen, reed bed, hedgerow, urban British habitats, and wetlands. Flowering plants, fruits, and grasses create rich habitats of seasonal variety that encourage pollinating insects and bees. In an explicit biodiversity-first approach, winding paths and elevated routes channel human movement away from sensitive areas so habitats can mature. 

It’s an award-winning example of how cultural institutions can anchor urban nature as everyday infrastructure. The Urban Nature Project effectively increases biodiversity and provides new public and recreational areas accessible to all.

Make blue-green systems the spine

Wetland Vitality | Colombia 

Green-Blue Network | China

Healthy urban biodiversity depends on water that’s allowed to flow, slow, soak, and support life. Blue–green systems are citywide networks that combine water infrastructure (creeks, wetlands, swales, permeable surfaces) with green infrastructure (trees, meadows, parks) to manage rain as a resource. These water management systems improve urban biodiversity by creating layered, connected habitats and shallow wet edges that slow, soak and clean water [2]. They support more plants, invertebrates, amphibians and birds, and strengthen ecosystem function.

In Bogotá, Colombia, Wetland Vitality restores a damaged wetland as a 5.5-kilometre linear park that reconciles habitat repair with public access and education. The project to recover the environment aimed to consolidate the Jaboque wetlands system and put clear limits on sprawl. It demonstrates how a city can treat wetland protection as a growth boundary and a civic amenity at once. This project provides community recreation access. It also supports better water-cycle functions. This includes flood control, aquifer recharge, and water purification. Furthermore, native plants will be restored to improve habitat. The corridor will function as both blue and green infrastructure, incorporating hydrology and ecology.

In Shenzhen, China, the Green-Blue Network reframes urban drainage as a nature-based corridor. Partial reconfiguration of existing concrete canals made way for terraced wetlands and lush vegetation. Recycled and reused demolished concrete forms gabion structures for planters, retaining walls, and boardwalks. Mangroves and native wetland plants activate natural biological processes to cleanse wastewater, which is then reused to irrigate and fertilize the park. The project converts engineered channels into living waterways, adding public green while managing stormwater at scale. The initial site at Liyumen Waterway Park confirms the approach: when drainage works like a landscape, biodiversity and people can both benefit.

Multiple impact by creating corridors

Stream Co-Habitat | Türkiye

Isolated parks are ecological islands; biodiversity flourishes when cities build connected networks of corridors and stepping-stone habitats so species can move, feed, and reproduce across the urban matrix. Ecological networks that are well-connected support pollination, seed dispersal, and climate resilience, and they should be planned intentionally across scales [3]. 

The Stream Co-Habitat for Tuzla (on Istanbul’s fringe) turns a neglected stream into a connective 9km-long green corridor that links schools, civic buildings, and housing. The Umur Stream is the project’s spine. The project creates a corridor and looping framework (ecological, programmatic, and circulation loops) by linking fragmented green areas between a lake and the sea. The proposal’s power lies in its ordinariness: a local waterway, treated as the everyday spine of public life, becomes an ecological backbone and a safe, shaded mobility route.

Pair ecology with social infrastructure

La Quebradora Hydraulic Park | Mexico

Urban nature projects enhance their lifespan when designed as social infrastructure. When parks, wetlands and greenways are woven into infrastructure for learning, sport, culture, and care they become supported by the community. Evidence shows that connecting with nearby nature leads to better ecosystems and stewardship. Urban green spaces improve health and social well-being, encouraging people to participate in care. 

La Quebradora Hydraulic Park exemplifies this approach. Located in a densely built area of Greater Mexico City, the project reimagines a neglected public space as both an ecological filter and a social hub. Its centrepiece is a water-treatment wetland that restores local hydrology by treating polluted runoff and slowing surface flows. Its design layers that function with vital public uses: shaded walkways, play areas, sport courts, and cultural gathering spaces. The landscape itself becomes the infrastructure, allowing visitors to engage directly with the water cycle.

By fusing environmental systems with public amenities, the project builds local stewardship and extends the relevance of ecology into daily life. It’s a strategy that makes ecological infrastructure perceived as of greater value, because it’s not just about nature, it’s about people too.

Future-liveable cities are nature-led

If cities are to stay liveable in a more volatile and unequal century, biodiversity can’t be decorative. It has to be designed as core infrastructure. That means shifting from scattered greenery to connected, blue–green networks; from cosmetic planting to habitat-led landscapes with living soils and year-round structure; and from one-off projects to places woven into daily life so communities become long-term stewards. 

Do that, and the benefits compound: cooler streets, cleaner water, less impactful floods, richer public life, and ecosystems that can adapt. This isn’t a luxury: it’s the fastest way to build urban resilience and civic wellbeing with the budgets we already have.