Spatial planning for urban biodiversity: barriers, challenges and (counter)narratives from the case of Rijeka (Croatia)

This poster examines the contribution of spatial plans in preserving, restoring, and strengthening urban biodiversity in coastal settlements. It approaches this topic through an in-depth investigation of a case study, the city of Rijeka, located along the Northern Adriatic coast in Croatia. The objective is to analyze what interpretations of urban biodiversity, both in terrestrial and marine environments, emerge from the spatial plans at municipal and county levels, and what barriers and challenges characterize the integration of urban biodiversity in spatial planning. Concerning the methodology, the research has employed a documentary analysis of plans and planning strategies, and several semi-structured interviews addressed to local planning officers and civil society representatives to collect qualitative data that have been analyzed through a discourse analysis. These have been complemented by field surveys and sessions of participant observation carried out in the case study. Results show a limited acknowledgment of urban biodiversity in spatial plans and planning processes. This is partly related to a “traditional” understanding of biodiversity as a “non-urban dynamic” that should be preserved and supported merely in natural or semi-natural environments. This overlooks the opportunity to consider the multiple benefits provided by biodiversity and nature ecosystems to the well-being of residents in cities. Research has also highlighted the strong pressures from the real estate sector to strengthen the attractiveness of coastal localities for the tourism economy, which result in deteriorating highly biodiverse areas, placing nature conservation in a marginal role on the urban agenda, and overlooking its value within a vision of sustainable blue economy. Nevertheless, the research has underlined the emergence of some grassroots initiatives working in the field of nature preservation and stewardship in the city which are developing an alternative interpretation of urban biodiversity. These initiatives contribute to affirming a “counter-narrative” of urban biodiversity that has the potential to introduce spaces of innovations in plans and policies towards a better acknowledgment of human-nature and land-sea interactions in spatial planning.