The promotion of the nature is one of the tools used to improve the urban environment, reduce pollution, mitigate climate changes and contribute to the maintenance of biodiversity. But works in urban ecology have focused essentially on parks, gardens and vegetated roofs. Only few researches involve the greening of walls and streets that could play a social, ecological and physical role, base of an urban sustainability. This research is essential for a global approach to the urban planning and set up of green networks in dense city. We propose a consortium of research laboratories, SMEs and associations involved in urban approach, able to make a first assessment of the ecological services provided by these greenings, to study their ecological and biochemical functions, technical implementations and citizen appreciations, but also to experiment with innovative prototypes. Our program can be divided into two main areas: - What is and how does it work today? This work will involve national and international literature review (Phase A on the state of the art and synthesis of knowledge on ecological vegetation walls , courtyards and streets in town: expected technical services, implementations, observed social involvement...) but also active research on the ecological functions (Phase B on the evaluation of biotic and abiotic functions of current vegetation techniques: what biodiversity, what relationship with substrates, conditions and physicochemical constraints...) and social (Phase C on assessment of societal functioning of the vegetation: what economy, what governance, what regulations, what perception and opinions... ) - What innovative proposals can be made? This involves experimental work at building and street scale (Phase D testing of innovative proposals for vegetation: reasoning on the development of prototypes, architectural experiments on coatings, substrates, methods of irrigation...), but also studies on the potential and functioning at a global scale (Phase E on the evaluation of urban potential and functionning expected in an urban project: area available, types of spaces and owners, relationship with greenways, possible regulations...). The work is set to three years and analyses will be conducted at different scales island / district / city on the city of Nantes and the Grand Paris.

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.

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.

Trees play an essential role in the functioning of urban socio-ecosystems, providing vital ecosystem services for city dwellers. The diversity, size and distribution of trees in urban spaces reflect the socio-cultural dynamics of cities. Urban trees are vulnerable to environmental stresses and, as such, are sentinels of global change (heat, drought, soil artificialisation, erosion of biodiversity, introduction of species) as much as they represent a management lever for adapting cities to climate change. Understanding the factors that make urban trees vulnerable to biotic and abiotic stresses is essential if we are to manage the urban forest and sustainably drive the ecosystem services provided by trees to city dwellers. As the majority of urban trees are privately owned, urban forest management initiatives need to be a joint effort between municipal services and private individuals. This implies that all stakeholders share the same knowledge of the matter, the different management options and their consequences. It is therefore essential that scientific knowledge about turban tree health is accessible, understood and shared between the great diversity of stakeholders and citizen. OSCAR - the Scientific and Citizen Observatory of Urban Trees Hetalth - has this threefold ambition: (1) to co-construct scientific knowledge through the sponsorship of sentinel trees, (2) to encourage the dissemination of this knowledge in various forms so that (3) it can be appropriated by individuals and managers of green spaces and urban forests.