Nowadays, urban sprawl is generating nuisances: the increase of artificial surfaces to the detriment of natural surfaces has consequences on urban environment quality (urban heat island, pollution'), but also on the energy consumption. With the increase of urban population it is necessary to find compromises. In the project VegDUD, vegetation is observed as one of the possible solutions for the sustainable development of cities. - Practices : What are the traditional and novel practices of the urban vegetation ? How interesting are they from the climatic and urban points of view ? How can we formalize the overall (environmental, social, economical) assessment of these practices ? The urban vegetation TYPOLOGIE task group will construct a pluridisciplinary documentation of vegetation set-ups and of their characteristics to answer these first questions. - Instrumentation : Do we know how to quantify the various impacts of vegetation set-ups on the environment ? How much do the increase of artificial surfaces modify these impacts ? What are the best spatial and temporal scales to assess these vegetal techniques ? MODELISATION task group will implement urban vegetation representations in climatology, hydrology, sound propagation, and building energy models. Several scales will be considered, from the architectural scale up to that of the city. It will be completed by an EXPERIMENTATION task group where suited measurement techniques will be implemented to understand the physical processes generated by the vegetation. Experimental campaigns will allow validating the models developed in MODELISATION tasks. - Urban vegetation modeling : What are the techniques allowing to rapidly acquire a sufficient understanding of urban vegetation presence at a large scale ? How can we build numerical models rendering the building-vegetation interactions in the actual city and in the extrapolations of the future city ? How can we construct realistic scenarios allowing to help taking policy decisions or to propose solutions adapted to a sustainable urban development ? To answer this new domain of questions, the PHYSIOGRAPHIE task group will set a GIS based on the typology constructed in the TYPOLOGIE tasks. This GIS will incorporate the new understandings and the alternative scenarios. It will propose simulations and applications to a urban development model including vegetation. Vice versa, it will also allow to integrate and display the simulation results. - Vegetation impact assessment : With which criteria, at which spatial and temporal scales, can we compare the impacts of the various vegetation implantation techniques (vegetal roofs, micro hanging gardens, porous parking lots, filtering roadways, urban lagoons, urban rivers) ? What is the method for an overall assessment ? Can we identify a typo-genealogy of vegetal ambiences in relation with climatic, perceptive, and societal characteristics ? - Retrospective analysis and anticipation : What will be the long term impacts of the actual policies ? What are the possible alternatives ? What is the best vegetation effort with respect to ambience, energy, hydrology stakes ? Can we imagine the urban vegetation as an appropriable space, adapted to the cultural organization of each society ? We will answer these questions in two task groups, EvalPRIV and EvalCOLL, which separate the private use (gardens, architectural set-ups) and the collective use (public gardens, parks) of urban vegetation. In each of these two tasks we will consider the questions of retrospective and prospective analyses. These tasks rely mainly on comparative simulations with the models developed within MODELISATION. The set-ups will be first individually assessed for their small scale impacts, then large scale projections of the most interesting ones will be analyzed. The assessments will not be limited to the physical roles of vegetation, they will integrate the economical constraints, the sensible aspects and the usages of vegetation. Indeed, the sustainable development planning of a vegetation development in an urban site can be isolated neither from the built environment where the citizens will live, nor from the pluri-sensory experience of the users. The final objective of these assessments is to complete the vegetation typology to propose an operational tool allowing to orientate a climatic policy of the urban vegetation.

In order to remediate the negative externalities caused by urbanization, urban planning policies are turning to developing productive and sustainable cities based on the development of nature in the city. The Bises project “Biodiversity of Urban soils in sustainable cities: state of art, interactions between productive/unproductive green spaces and ecosystem services provisions” aims to support this transition through an increase of soil ecology scientific knowledge in urban socio-ecosystems. These breakthroughs are necessary to set multifunctional green spaces. The project is based on a consortium constituted by academic labs ((UMR CEFE, UMR AgroEcologie Dijon, UMR LSE, UMR CESCO, UMR EPhor, UMR IEES-Paris, OSU ECCE Terra) and and a non governmental organization GO (Plante & Cité). It will be deployed in four french metropoles with different biopedoclimatic conditions (Paris, Nancy, Nantes and Montpellier). The main objective is to gain a better understanding of soil organisms in cities and particularly of the spatial and temporal dynamics in various urban land uses: private gardens, parks or urban farms. A challenge will be to evaluate the impact of practices but also colonization process on urban soil biodiversity functions and associated services (support, food production, biomass production, air/water regulation or biocontrol). The scientific originality of the project is based on: • The combination of all the soil fauna taxa (macro, meso and micro-fauna) and microorganisms (bacteria and fungi), which has never been done before at a national scale. • The development and application of approaches based on the linkage of all soil taxa through the calculation of aggregated indicators or multi-phylum interaction webs. • The linkage of academic science and citizen science based on a co-construction at all steps of the scientific process and will help to access to private land uses, which represent an important part of urban green spaces. • A spatially explicit approach on soil biodiversity, which is still limited • The link between soil biodiversity properties, functions and ecosystem services. The scientific program is divided between a coordination Work-package (WP 0) and four-knowledge production WP’s. WP1 is dedicated to sampling design and sampled site selection. WP2 is dedicated to the use of the biodiversity indicators dashboard (biodiversity, functional biodiversity and functions). WP3 will develop aggregated indicators based on WP1 and WP2 outputs and will address the link between biodiversity and Ecosystem services. WP4 is dedicated to dissemination and various citizen science actions. Besides major advances in terms of basic research in soil ecology, macro ecology or functional ecology in urban landscapes, the project will lead to the validation of a dashboard of the biological quality of urban soils for the sustainable management of cities.

Based on a detailed mapping of urban challenges and relevant nature-based solutions (NBS), Nature4Cities aims at developing complementary and interactive modules to engage urban stakeholders in a collective-learning process about re-naturing cities, develop and circulate new business, financial and governance models for NBS projects, as well as provide tools for the impacts assessment, valorisation and follow-up of NBS projects. The different modules are: • a database of generic NBS and associated environmental, economic and social performances • an observatory of NBS projects best practices / case studies • a set of innovative business, financial and governance models for the deployment of NBS in a range of different contexts, together with a tool to help urban stakeholders identify eligible models regarding their NBS project contexts • a NBS project impact assessment toolbox providing capabilities for environmental, economic and social impacts evaluation at different stages in the project development cycle from opportunity/feasibility studies to design steps and project follow-up). This toolbox will built on a range of tools, from generic indicator-based assessment for early project stages, down to detailed modelisations of NBS behaviors. These modules that already have a proper purpose on their own, will furthermore be integrated in a NBS dissemination and assessment self-learning platform [N4C Platform] to assist NBS project developers along the entire life cycle of their projects from opportunity studies and project definition down to performance monitoring. Nature4Cities indicators, methodologies, tools and platform will be field tested in real working environments and on real nature-based solution projects and developments in selected cities in Europe, which will be partners of the project and engage their technical urban and environmental planning teams.

JASSUR project is intending to study functions, uses, modalities of functioning and potential risks or dangers resulting from associative gardens, in emerging sustainable cities. Those urban associative gardens, which can be referred to as several names, and exist under various status and forms, are growing up in many industrialized countries, including France. This project aims at identifying required actions to maintain, restore, transform or even develop the effect of associative gardens on urban territories facing the challenges of sustainability. In order to do this, the project leans on a consortium of 12 research partners (various institutions) and citizen organizations in seven French cities (Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nancy, Nantes, Paris and Toulouse). JASSUR project is based on a central question: what services do urban associative gardens provide for cities sustainable development? Ecosystem services rendered to the city, understood as in the complete meaning of the term proposed by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (provisioning, regulating, supporting, cultural services) are still largely unknown. Facing the knowledge to develop in order to go through these services, JASSUR project assumes that studying food services provided by these urban associative gardens, which are very poorly studied, is a link between: • A bio-physico-chemical characterization of soils and products of the gardens: potential risks of pollution due to urban context (soil, atmosphere) are central as they may counteract the food supply service; • A socio-technical characterization of gardeners practices, both regarding their choices in terms of crops, their production techniques and the quantitative and qualitative contribution of garden products to insure a food supply and a better diet to families; • A socio-political characterization of the governance of these spaces in urban areas, particularly in terms of managing their locations, ways of functioning, potential environmental and health risks. The scientific program is organized in tasks, the first one being coordination (task 1) and four knowledge production tasks. Task 2 deals with the actors involved in the establishment and life of the gardens, their governance and their place in urban planning. Task 3 analyzes food supply service (cropping practices, yields and uses of products, measures of consumption and nutrient intake, gardener’s representations as to the advantages and dangers of gardens). Task 4 deals with regulatory and support ecosystem services, emphasizing those related to biodiversity and water regulation. This work also addresses metrology of dangers through two major sources of potential pollution: the soil and the atmosphere. Task 5, tasks 3 and 4 related, will suggest strategies that communities may use to manage pollution (including bioremediation and phytoremediation). Deliverables will be in each task and inter-task various scientific productions (disciplinary and interdisciplinary publications, participation in conferences), but also decision support for managing gardens for the purpose of city partners (eg, maps of risks). In particular, animations with these cities are planned.