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Climate change is occurring around us and impacting on our daily lives, meaning that we have to deal with our cities in a different way. There is also increasing awareness of the need for daily contact with green spaces and the natural environment in order to live a happy, productive and meaningful life.

This reflective essay tells the narrative of how urbanisation has been disconnecting humans from nature. Non-sustainable, non-resilient patterns of urbanisation, along with the neglect of inner-city areas, have resulted in fragmentation and urban decline, led to a loss of biodiversity, and caused the deterioration of ecosystems and their services. Urban regeneration projects allow us to “repair” and restore some of this damage whilst enhancing urban resilience. Connecting existing and enhanced ecosystems, and re-establishing ecosystems both within cities and at the peri-urban fringe is vital for strengthening ecosystem resilience and building adaptive capacity for coping with the effects of climate change.

Cities worldwide need to look for suitable solutions to increase the resilience of their urban spaces in the face of climate change. This essay explores how this can be achieved through the integration of nature-based solutions, the re-greening of neighbourhoods and by correctly attributing value to natural capital. Transforming existing cities and neighbourhoods in this way will enable ecosystems to contribute their services towards healthier and more liveable cities.

This paper aims to explore the topic of adaptive reuse referring to urban open spaces into a more-than-human perspective. It underlines that dealing with heritage means being part of an inherent and ongoing process of transformation and so that reuse is inextricably an adaptive practice, constantly facing mutations, and that adaptation is a coral practice that involves different kinds of users and makers, inclusive of human and not human livings.

This paper looks at the lexicon of abandonment, in search of the more essential and intense meanings of words, and at some pioneering practices in Europe to comprehend the aesthetic and ethical implications of adaptive reuse of neglected landscapes.

Processes of reuse involve many different communities of users who in turn continuously redesign the site, into a comprehensive, coral and conflicting collaboration, whose results are never given once for all and are both uncanny and beautiful, scaring and marvellous, like a monster.

Accepting the idea that humans are not the only users and makers of urban sites can widen the range of tools, methods and values involved in heritage adaptive reuse.

This paper tries to widen the meanings of adaptation into a multispecies perspective. It intends to broaden the range of agents that can be involved as users and makers, assuming a more-than-human point of view that is not yet commonly applied.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the urban resilience capacity and its relations with the economic, social and environmental well-being in smart cities in the state of São Paulo (SP), particularly after the 2008 financial crisis.

Concerning its objectives, this study is characterized as descriptive. From the point of view of technical procedures, the research is bibliographic, and regarding data collection, it is documental. The approach of this research is quantitative, since it uses the statistical method. The sample was made up by 62 smart cities located in SP. The analysis comprised the period from 2010 to 2015.

The urban resilience pillars influence the economic well-being represented by the gross national product, in 58.8 percent, social well-being represented by the life expectancy of the residents of the smart cities, in 71.7 percent, and in environmental well-being indicated by CO₂ emissions, in 21.5 percent.

They are related to the researchers’ decision about the methodological design.

This study was limited to smart cities in SP listed in the RBCIH (Brazilian Network of Human Smart Cities), and may be extended to other cities in other Brazilian states.

How resilience dimensions related to economic, social and environmental well-being such as poverty, food security, health, well-being, education quality, climate changes, and the like, were measured, which can be investigated in future research studies.

Despite its growing popularity worldwide, the urban resilience pillars and their relationship with human well-being in smart cities in the national context are little investigated, making this research original.

Access to food through retail supply chain distribution can vary significantly among the urban poor and leads to household food insecurity. The paper explores this sustainable supply chain phenomenon through a field study among South Africa's urban poor.

Urban metabolic flows is the theoretical basis in the context of supply chain management (SCM). The field study comprised 59 semi-structured interviews in one South African township. Data were recorded, transcribed and translated, and coded using NVivo 12 to provide an inventory of eight themes categorized and patterned from the analysis.

Findings indicate societal factors play a significant role affecting food distribution, access and security from a spatial perspective of retail outlet locations and a nutritional standpoint regarding quality and quantity of food.

The study is exploratory in one township, and while rigorously conducted, the generalizability of findings is limited to this context.

The study practically contributes by providing guidance for food retailers and policymakers to include nutritional guidelines in their distribution planning, as well as the dynamics of diverse neighbourhoods that exist in modern urban contexts.

New forms of retail food distribution can provide better security and access to food for the urban poor, contributing to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2 Zero Hunger and 11 Liveable Cities.

The study is interdisciplinary and contributes by linking UN SDGs and SCM through urban metabolic flows from development studies as an overarching framework to enable analysis of relationships between physical, social and economic factors in the urban environment.

The interconnections between climate change and health are well studied. However, there is a perceived need for studies that examine how responses to health hazards (e.g. cardiovascular diseases, ozone layer effects, allergens, mental health and vector-borne diseases) may assist in reducing their impacts. The purpose of this paper is to review the evidence on health responses to climate hazards and list some measures to address them.

A mixed literature review, bibliometric analysis and an original online survey were undertaken on 140 participants from 55 countries spread across all geographical regions.

The bibliometric analysis identified that most climate-related health hazards are associated with extreme weather events. However, only one-third of the investigated papers specifically analysed the connections between climate change and health hazards, revealing a thematic gap. Also, although Africa is highly affected by climate change, only 5% of the assessed studies focused on this continent. Many respondents to the survey indicated “heat distress” as a significant vulnerability. The survey also identified social determinants relevant to climate-induced health vulnerabilities, such as socioeconomic and environmental factors, infrastructure and pre-existing health conditions. Most respondents agree that policies and regulations are the most effective adaptation tools to address the public health hazards triggered by climate change. This paper presents some suggestions for optimising public health responses to health hazards associated with climate change, such as the inclusion of climate-related components in public health policies, setting up monitoring systems to assess the extent to which specific climate events may pose a health threat, establishing plans to cope with the health implications of heatwaves, increased measures to protect vulnerable groups and education and awareness-raising initiatives to reduce the overall vulnerability of the population to climate-related health hazards. These measures may assist the ongoing global efforts to understand better – and cope with – the impacts of climate change on health.

The combination of a literature review, bibliometric analysis and an original world survey identified and presented a wide range of responses.

Globally, urban planners and decision makers are pursuing place-based initiatives to develop and enhance urban infrastructure to optimise city performance, competitiveness and sustainability credentials. New discourses associated with big data, Building Information Modelling, SMART cities, green and biophilic thinking inform research, policy and practice agendas to varying extents. However, these discourses remain relatively isolated as much city planning is still pursued within traditional sectoral silos hindering integration. This research explores new conceptual ground at the Smart – Natural City interface within a safe interdisciplinary opportunity space. Using the city of Birmingham UK as a case study, a methodology was developed championing co-design, integration and social learning to develop a conceptual framework to navigate the challenges and opportunities at the Smart-Natural city interface. An innovation workshop and supplementary interviews drew upon the insights and experiences of 25 experts leading to the identification of five key spaces for the conceptualisation and delivery at the Smart-Natural city interface. At the core is the space for connectivity; surrounded by spaces for visioning, place-making, citizen-led participatorylearning and monitoring.The framework provides a starting point for improved discussions, understandings and negotiations to cover all components of this particular interface. Our results show the importance of using all spaces within shared narratives; moving towards ‘silver-green’ and living infrastructure and developing data in response to identified priorities. Whilst the need for vision has dominated traditional urban planning discourses we have identified the need for improved connectivity as a prerequisite. The use of all 5 characteristics collectively takes forward the literature on socio-ecological-technological relationships and heralds significant potential to inform and improve city governance frameworks, including the benefits of a transferable deliberative and co-design method that generates ownership with a real stake in the outcomes.