Conclusion

In the final chapter, Conclusions, editors Brown et al. reflect on and set out some practical lessons from the Urban Living Laboratories (ULLs) established in six diverse partner cities of the Climate Resilient Urban Nexus CHoices (CRUNCH) project that may have wider applicability to cities planning on nexus approaches as a vehicle to realise resilience. The conditions found to be most conducive to progressing nature-based solutions include committed funding, such as within Uppsala and Taipei. Success was also found in a very small and self-selecting community of like-minded people, as found in the Eindhoven ULL, where the wider applicability may be limited unless those conditions can be met. Having an urban greening champion within the city administration who was also flexible was crucial for a project to progress. Life-cycle costing needs to be better accounted for in the post-project period, notably budgeting for on-going maintenance. Communication and compromise are fundamental, otherwise nexus projects run the danger of being purely academic exercises. The chapter also presents a set of conclusions concerning the development of the Integrated Discussion Support system, which was a key output of the CRUNCH project. The editors draw together some thoughts concerning complex large-scale multinational research projects with ambitious aims.