Planning Nature based Solutions for healthier cities

As acknowledged by the Habitat III New Urban Agenda, public spaces play a crucial role in urban interaction and systemic urban innovation and produce more and more benefit to human health and wellbeing. The development of healthier, greener and happier public spaces can strongly contribute to the creation of more liveable cities and healthier population. In this context, Nature Based Solutions (NBSs) can provide a valuable answer to environmental and societal challenges, and can contribute to develop healthier cities. In the last years, NBSs have entered in the scientific and research vocabulary as an appealing term to define solutions that are inspired by nature and that are able to provide multiple benefits in a range of impact categories (water management, climate adaptation, food provision, urban regeneration, social inclusion, etc.). The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the positive impact of the integration of NBSs in the design and planning of public spaces, investigating how the integration of those solutions into planning approaches could also contribute to increase human health and wellbeing. To this aim, the paper will provide an overview of the indicators of defined categories of the EKLIPSE framework, comparing those with relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) indicators in a critical way and considering their possible integration into traditional urban planning standards.