Growing cities are facing negative effects of climate change, such as biodiversity loss, increased flooding, erosion of the stream banks, and pollution from the stormwater runoff. While the situation has been identified, many cities find it difficult to embark on a path of change.

In City Blues, we create a web-based tool for the cities which brings together our experiences and best practices on how to use nature-based solutions (NBS) and catchment-based approach for urban flooding and stormwater management. We describe the different stages from financing and planning to implementation, maintenance, and monitoring. We focus also on how to involve stakeholders in this work.

During the project, we design and implement five different pilots in Aarhus, Malmö, Stavanger, Tampere, and Tartu. We share our learnings in transnational workshops and other events and add them to the online tool.

Using nature-based solutions in stormwater management brings other benefits as well, like better living environment with more species. We want to make the use of NBS and watershed-based thinking mainstream.