2025 – 2026

Part of our RESEARCH Pillar

Cities grapple with rising climate risks, biodiversity loss, and growing pressure to deliver more liveable and equitable urban environments. Despite several strategic initiatives that call for biodiversity-inclusive urban planning and governance, practical implementation remains constrained by systemic barriers, particularly a lack of shared understanding of the actual demand for green infrastructure (GI). 

As the Greening Cities Partnership of the EU Urban Agenda pointed out in its Action Plan: accessing and justifying investment for green infrastructure remains difficult, and part of the problem lies in the absence of demand metrics. The general benefits of nature are widely acknowledged, but few cities have the capacity to quantify ecosystem service needs on their territory. As a result, red tape and bureaucratic uncertainty persist, often prioritizing traditional “grey” infrastructure projects for climate adaptation over greener, more adaptive alternatives. In that context, stakeholders from the Greening Cities Partnership have requested a targeted analysis from ESPON to develop a Methodology for Quantifying the Demand for Green Infrastructure at Local Level (GILL).

The ESPON GILL project is implemented under the lead of TECNALIA Research & Innovation, together with the Institute for Urban Excellence, and the European Forest Institute. We bring together our expertise in applied research, spatial planning, and forest / ecosystem management to develop this methodology linking environmental and spatial data into a demand-side framework: instead of focusing only on what nature can offer, the project asks who needs nature, where, and for what purpose, and how these needs are currently being met or left unaddressed. It will be tested across six diverse European cities, with the end goal of supporting cities in shaping effective Urban Nature Plans. The iUE will be working with two case studies: Imola in Italy and Sopot in Poland. 

As cities across Europe (and beyond) prepare their next-generation climate and biodiversity strategies, ESPON GILL will provide a blueprint to align policy, data, and investment for greener, fairer, and more resilient urban futures!