URBREATH - Reimagining Urban Futures

Cities are facing an increasing number of challenges. Land scarcity, limited budgets, demographic changes and intensifying climatic conditions call for new, sometimes unconventional approaches that address all these challenges, in order to keep cities liveable. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) represent a cost-effective, systemic approach that can address these very challenges in the medium and long term, although the implementation of NbS in cities requires careful planning, execution and monitoring by local authorities. As part of the Horizon Europe URBREATH project, a training programme was designed in 2025 to qualify representatives of European local authorities as ‘Nature-based Solutions Change Agents’. Bringing together the content delivered in the training programme, this reader is organised around four key areas of action for transformative and sustainable urban development. In addition to planning-related issues, suggestions regarding stakeholder participation, the sustainable financing of NbS projects and the use of digital technologies are explained and presented with critical reflection.