Stakeholder Needs and Learning Preferences for Nature-based Solutions: A Comparative Study of Turin and Eindhoven

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are increasingly promoted as effective approaches to address urban challenges such as climate resilience, biodiversity loss, and human wellbeing. However, despite clear benefits, cities still face significant barriers to mainstreaming NbS, including limited technical knowledge, fragmented collaboration among stakeholders, and inadequate tools to support learning and co-creation. This thesis investigates these gaps by combining a literature review with empirical research to identify practical needs and preferences of local stakeholders. As part of the ClimaGen European project, a survey was conducted with stakeholders in Turin and Eindhoven to understand their roles, challenges, and preferred methods for learning and collaboration in planning and implementing NbS. The results show that stakeholders often struggle with interdepartmental coordination, funding constraints, and effective citizen engagement, but see great potential in Living Labs and co-creation processes to overcome these barriers. The findings inform recommendations for developing practical guidance that support cities in designing inclusive and collaborative NbS for urban climate resilience.