Biurbs

Project title: Valuing biodiversity in urban areas and new developments (Biurbs)

Project duration: August 2022-August 2025

Funder: UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)

Project leader for SPE: Professor Danielle Sinnett

Other UWE Bristol researcher: Professor Jessica Lamond

Research partners/collaborators:

• University of Manchester (Principal Investigator: Professor Ada Wassink)
• University of East London
• Stolon Studio

The UK Government's Nature Positive 2030 report recommends businesses, organisations, cities, and local authorities adopt targets to become Nature Positive - putting the crises of biodiversity loss and climate change on an equal footing. However, densification or the compact city approach is a main strategy for urban development. Although biodiversity may benefit other eco-system services, such as sustainable drainage, outdoor recreation, and noise and heat attenuation, yet the economic value of biodiversity is undercounted in existing planning tools.

Biurbs is co-led by a multi-disciplinary team of leading researchers from across the country and innovative architecture and green infrastructure practitioners. The project involves extensive collaboration with UK stakeholders to ensure the work is relevant to decision making in practice and addresses the Government's nature conservation and greening objectives as well as wider societal factors including adapting to climate change and social cohesion. The research will be connected through four work packages that link to two themes: Biodiversity in decision making, and Management tools for decision makers.

Visit project website

• Osei, G., Connop, S., Nash, C., Sinnett, D. (2025). Supporting decision-making for nature recovery through urban development – a map of sustainable spatial development tools. Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, 113, 129075. 
• Hughes, P., Sinnett, D., Lamond, J. (2024). Goals, barriers and enablers to realising biodiversity delivery through new development [Poster]. Urban Transitions 2024, Stiges, Spain.
• Surma, M., Lamond, J., & Sinnett, D. (2025, June 10). Creating biodiverse urban developments? Multi-stakeholder perspectives on biodiversity offsetting [Presentation/Talk]. EURA 2025: Creating healthy and sustainable cities, Bristol. 

Using a Delphi expert panel method to rank the importance of goals, barriers and enablers to biodiversity delivery we found that:

• legislation and its enforcement emerged as the primary lever for improved biodiversity delivery.
• there is a lack of preparedness in skills, knowledge and resources among planners to appropriately ensure that legislative aims are delivered.
• there are differences of opinion between stakeholders on the viability of biodiversity delivery and the extent to which biodiversity can be comfortably co-delivered alongside other objectives.

Interviews with those involved with development in England, found that:

• pre-development stages are essential for delivering cost-effective urban biodiversity.
• multi-stakeholder collaboration is key to delivering biodiverse new development.
• the (perceived) cost of delivering biodiversity in new developments influences the overall decision-making process in both private and public sectors.
• biodiversity offsetting may negatively impact urban biodiversity in new developments.

Overall, the research provides an improved understanding of biodiversity delivery which can support improvements in the development process in England and elsewhere.

For more information about the project, please contact Professor Danielle Sinnett (danielle.sinnett@uwe.ac.uk).