Advancing Local-Regional Integration Through Urban Nature Plans

Urban Nature Plans (UNPs) are increasingly recognized as strategic instruments for mainstreaming biodiversity, enhancing climate resilience, and supporting sustainable urban transformation. However, the ecological processes and socio-environmental challenges they seek to address extend beyond municipal boundaries, requiring stronger integration across territorial scales and governance levels. This chapter examines the role of local-regional integration in enabling the effective development of UNPs. Drawing on spatial planning literature, it examines the organizational, procedural, and normative challenges that affect the alignment of local actions with broader regional strategies. The chapter analyses local-regional integration through three complementary sets of conditions: spatial and biophysical, institutional and societal, and financial. Empirical insights are drawn from a collaborative process involving five European cities, Barcelona, Paris, Belgrade, Burgas, and Mannheim. The Barcelona metropolitan context is presented as an illustrative example of multi-scale integration, while the experiences of the other cities are used to identify common opportunities, barriers, and emerging practices. The chapter concludes by arguing that local-regional integration is not merely a technical planning challenge, but plays a key role in advancing biodiversity mainstreaming and nature restoration within coherent territorial development strategies across scales.