Abstract
The evidence base for the benefits of urban nature for people and biodiversity is strong. However, cities are diverse and the social and environmental contexts of cities are likely to influence the observed effects of urban nature, and the application of evidence to differing contexts. To explore biases in the evidence base for the effects of urban nature, we text-matched city names in the abstracts and affiliations of 14 786 journal articles, from separate searches for articles on urban biodiversity, the health and wellbeing impacts of urban nature, and on urban ecosystem services. City names were found in 51% of article abstracts and 92% of affiliations. Most large cities were studied many times over, while only a small proportion of small cities were studied once or twice. Almost half the cities studied also had an author with an affiliation from that city. Most studies were from large developed cities, with relatively few studies from Africa and South America in particular. These biases mean the evidence base for the effects of urban nature on people and on biodiversity does not adequately represent the lived experience of the 41% of the world’s urban population who live in small cities, nor the residents of the many rapidly urbanising areas of the developing world. Care should be taken when extrapolating research findings from large global cities to smaller cities and cities in the developing world. Future research should encourage research design focussed on answering research questions rather than city selection by convenience, disentangle the role of city size from measures of urban intensity (such as population density or impervious surface cover), avoid gross urban-rural dualisms, and better contextualise existing research across social and environmental contexts.
Highlights
Urban nature underpins the health and wellbeing of human and non-human life in settlements around the world (Ives et al 2017, Nilon et al 2017, Zhang et al 2020)
Literature on the effects of urban nature To validate and determine the extent of potential city-size bias in the literature on the effects of natural urban environments, we systematically reviewed three bodies of academic literature: (a) Urban ecology studies exploring the effects of natural urban environments on biodiversity (b) Health studies exploring the effects of natural urban environments on people’s health and wellbeing (c) Ecosystem services studies exploring the services and disservices provided by natural urban environments
A total of 7529 article abstracts were identified as containing at least one city name (51% of all articles), and 1778 articles mentioned more than one city name
Summary
Urban nature underpins the health and wellbeing of human and non-human life in settlements around the world (Ives et al 2017, Nilon et al 2017, Zhang et al 2020). Global policies advocating universal access to green space (such as the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda (UN Habitat 2016)) and local policies promoting urban forests and public green spaces are supported by thousands of studies demonstrating the dependence of biodiversity, ecosystem services and human health benefits on urban nature. What if this evidence base is skewed? Urban nature provides important ecosystem services such as cooling, storm water management, food production and recreation (Bolund and Hunhammar 1999, Dobbs et al 2014, Elmqvist et al 2015)
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