Biocultural Diversity in Urban Contexts: Research Trajectories and Implications for Community Green Space Improvement

Abstract

As biocultural diversity (BCD) research has expanded into urban contexts, greater attention has been paid to everyday green spaces, including parks and community gardens, and to the roles of residents, planners, and managers. Yet the research trajectories behind this expansion and the conceptual framing of urban biocultural diversity (UBCD) remain insufficiently synthesized. Drawing on 1, 180 BCD-related publications and 71 urban-focused publications retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection, this review combines bibliometric analyses using HistCite and CiteSpace with close readings of representative studies. The findings indicate that the extension of BCD research into cities involves more than a change of setting. Research has broadened to consider new places and actors, bringing everyday experiences, values, participation and long-term stewardship into sharper focus. Rather than treating biological and cultural diversity as additive, UBCD foregrounds the diverse and changing relationships through which people live with and shape urban nature. The materialized–lived–stewardship framework provides a structure for examining these relationships. For community green space improvement, this perspective calls for attention to ecological and spatial conditions, existing uses, participation, and long-term stewardship. Decisions about what to retain, modify or introduce should also consider how improvement may sustain, alter or reshape established human–nature relationships.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Biocultural Diversity / Urban Biocultural Diversity / Community Green Space Improvement / Human–Nature Relationship

Highlight

	· Traces the intellectual development of biocultural diversity in urban contexts
	· Clarifies UBCD as a perspective centered on diverse human–nature relationships
	· Discusses existing uses, stakeholder participation, and long-term stewardship in community green space improvement

1 Introduction

Global biodiversity governance is paying increasing attention to the connections between nature and culture and to their significance for conservation practice. The Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework explicitly recognizes the importance of the linkages between biological and cultural diversity^[1], while a related decision further highlights the added value of biocultural diversity (BCD)^[2]. BCD seeks to move beyond a dichotomous understanding of nature and culture by examining the mutual influences between biological environments and knowledge systems, values, social institutions and everyday practices^[3].

In recent years, urban human–nature interactions have emerged as a distinct strand of BCD research^[4]. The EU-funded Green Infrastructure and Urban Biodiversity for Sustainable Urban Development and the Green Economy (GREEN SURGE) project was among the earlier initiatives to connect BCD with urban green infrastructure, planning, and governance^[5]. Michelle Cocks, Charlie Shackleton, and colleagues have also examined how groups with different sociocultural backgrounds perceive, use and care for urban nature, and what these differences mean for green space planning and management^[6]. More recent studies in urban ethnobiology, alongside research on green space use among residents from different cultural backgrounds, have explored how population mobility, cultural background and lived experience shape urban human–nature relationships^[7–^8]. Together, these strands of research have contributed to the development of urban biocultural diversity (UBCD). In China, by contrast, BCD research has focused largely on ethnobotany^[9], traditional knowledge conservation^[10–^11], cultural landscape heritage^[12–^14] and protected area management^[15–^18], with comparatively limited attention to contemporary urban spaces and their dynamic social processes^[19].

As BCD research has moved into urban settings, its scope has come to include particular green spaces that residents encounter, use, and care for in everyday life. The improvement of urban green spaces concerns not only planting design and spatial quality but also which forms of urban nature should be retained, how competing uses might be reconciled, whose knowledge can inform decisions, and who will take responsibility for subsequent stewardship. Because community green spaces are closely woven into residents' daily lives, they offer settings in which these questions, and the changing human–nature relationships they entail, can be examined. There is therefore a need to trace systematically the intellectual development through which BCD has been extended to urban contexts and UBCD has taken shape, and to clarify what this perspective offers for community green space improvement. To this end, this study used bibliometric analysis as a supporting method to examine the conceptual development of UBCD and to discuss its implications for the improvement of community green spaces.

2 Data Sources and Methods

Two bodies of literature were assembled from the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection under the same search period, language restrictions, and document-type criteria. The first search used "biocultural" or "biocultural diversity" as Topic search terms and retrieved 1, 180 BCD-related publications. A separate Topic search for "urban biocultural diversity" retrieved 71 urban-focused publications. Both searches covered the period from 1 January 2000 to 30 May 2025 and were restricted to English-language articles and reviews. The broader corpus was used to examine the overall knowledge base of BCD; the urban-focused corpus was used to identify intellectual connections within research on urban contexts. A small number of more recent publications appearing after the search cut-off were consulted to inform the theoretical discussion but were not included in the bibliometric analyses.

The two corpora were examined using different, complementary analytical procedures. For the 1, 180-publication corpus, HistCite was used to trace key citation links, while CiteSpace was used to analyze keyword co-occurrence and identify the principal themes in BCD research and their development over time. For the 71-publication urban corpus, CiteSpace was used to conduct co-citation analysis. This analysis was considered together with close readings of key publications in the network and other representative studies to reconstruct the main research trajectories through which BCD was extended into urban contexts. Bibliometric analysis served primarily to reveal the structure of the literature and guide the selection of readings. The paper's interpretations of conceptual development, theoretical characteristics, and implications for community green space improvement rest principally on representative publications, materials from relevant international research projects, and comparisons across studies.

3 Conceptual Development of BCD and Its Extension Into Urban Contexts

3.1 Conceptual Origins and Research Trajectories of BCD

The concept of BCD emerged from a growing recognition of the close interrelationships between biological and cultural diversity. The Declaration of Belém, formulated at the First International Congress of Ethnobiology in 1988, was an early affirmation of their inseparability. It also emphasized the roles of Indigenous peoples and traditional communities in the stewardship of biological resources, the protection of traditional knowledge and related decision-making^[20–^21]. Luisa Maffi and Terralingua, which she helped establish in 1996, subsequently advanced this line of research^[22–^23]. Maffi conceptualized BCD in terms of the interrelationships among different expressions of life—biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity—within complex social–ecological adaptive systems. The emphasis was not on placing several forms of diversity side by side, but on their interdependence and co-evolution^[24–^25].

BCD research subsequently expanded into quantitative analysis, policy applications and collaboration across fields. In 2005, Jonathan Loh and David Harmon developed a global index of BCD, providing an early attempt to quantify spatial associations between biological and cultural diversity^[26]. In 2010, UNESCO and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (SCBD) established the Joint Programme of Work on the Links between Biological and Cultural Diversity. Subsequent regional declarations and collaborative initiatives brought nature–culture linkages further into international policy and conservation agendas^[27–^28] (Fig. 1). Discussion within the World Heritage field likewise addressed the connections between nature and culture, with cultural landscapes, local knowledge, and associated management experience becoming important considerations in heritage conservation and integrated management^[29–^31]. From the 2010s onwards, BCD research also examined the significance of Indigenous lands for biodiversity conservation^[32], local ecological knowledge^[33], assessments of cultural ecosystem services^[34], relational values^[35], biocultural indicators^[36], and the framework of Nature's Contributions to People (NCP)^[37–^38].

As the scope of BCD research broadened, scholars also began to synthesize biocultural approaches from the perspectives of nature conservation, sustainability, and interdisciplinary practice^[29,³⁹–^41] (Table 1). Although differing in emphasis, these syntheses share an attention to specific social-ecological contexts and to the influence of knowledge, values, actors, and institutional arrangements on human–nature interactions.

The keyword co-occurrence network for the 1, 180 publications, considered alongside representative studies, indicates that Indigenous and local knowledge, conservation and resource management have remained central concerns in BCD research. Other lines of enquiry have developed around plant use and cultural keystone species^[42–^43], landscapes and land use^[44], and multi-actor participation and adaptive governance^[45] (Fig. 2). Rather than asking only whether different forms of diversity co-occur, this work increasingly examines how biological and cultural dimensions interact in particular social–ecological contexts, and how knowledge, practices, and institutions shape resource use and conservation.

Overall, early BCD research focused primarily on the relationships among biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity. As the field developed, local knowledge, resource use, valuations, conservation management, and institutional arrangements became more prominent. Much of the empirical literature, however, continued to center on Indigenous peoples and local communities and remained closely tied to biodiversity conservation and natural resource management^[46].

3.2 The Extension of BCD Into Urban Contexts and the Development of UBCD Research

The key citation pathways generated by HistCite for the 1, 180-publication corpus indicate that, after 2015, studies addressing urban contexts gradually formed a relatively concentrated set of connections within the wider BCD citation network^[26,³⁶,³⁹,⁴⁷–^53] (Fig. 3). The key nodes and representative studies suggest that this development did not follow a single trajectory. Cocks was among the earlier scholars to examine natural resource use and its cultural significance in the context of modernization and population mobility. In 2006, she observed that BCD research had largely focused on Indigenous and local groups, whereas certain uses of natural resources and their cultural meanings could persist, adapt or be reconfigured as social and material environments changed. She therefore argued for extending BCD research to a wider range of social groups^[54]. In 2014, Cocks and Freerk Wiersum found that some forms of natural resource use, cultural practice, and place-based identity persisted among AmaXhosa people who had moved to peri-urban and urban areas^[55]. By 2016, Cocks and colleagues were examining urban residents' encounters with nature and their connections to identity, well-being, and shared heritage^[51].

Launched in 2013, the GREEN SURGE project approached BCD through urban green infrastructure and more systematically addressed its relationship to urban planning and management. The project encompassed policy, ecological conditions, residents' use of green spaces, and governance^[56–^57]. In a study of 20 European cities, Birgit Elands et al. found that although municipal green space managers rarely used the term BCD explicitly, existing policies and practices already addressed biodiversity, cultural values, green space use, and citizen participation. At the city scale, attention was directed more towards green space networks and policy arrangements; at the site scale, links to residents' everyday use, participation, and management were more apparent^[48]. Subsequent studies by scholars such as Kati Vierikko and Marleen Buizer brought into view how different sociocultural groups use and understand urban green spaces, as well as differences in knowledge, value judgements, competing interests, and participation in governance^[49–⁵⁰,^58].

The co-citation network of the 71 urban-focused publications further reveals connections among these strands of research. It links studies of urban residents by Cocks and colleagues, GREEN SURGE outputs, and research on experiences of urban nature and biodiversity assessment (Fig. 4). In thematic terms, urban ethnobiology has continued to examine plant use, residents' experiences of nature and their cultural meanings, while GREEN SURGE-related scholarship has focused more directly on green infrastructure, planning, and governance^[5,⁴⁸–⁵⁰,⁵²-⁵³,⁵⁶,⁵⁸–^63] (Fig. 5). The two strands have increasingly intersected around human–nature interactions and green space use and management in cities.

Around 2017, GREEN SURGE Work Package 2 consolidated research materials on UBCD and developed typologies and assessment content^[56–^57]. Building on these outputs, Elands and colleagues further elaborated the three-layer framework of materialized, lived, and stewardship BCD in 2019^[52]. In 2021, Sanna Stålhammar and Ebba Brink applied the framework in an informal settlement in Rio de Janeiro, examining residents' experiences of nature, group values, and participation^[53]. Paula Gonçalves et al. also developed an indicator-based decision-support tool for individual urban green spaces and tested it in parks in Lisbon^[62].

As BCD research expanded into urban contexts, everyday green spaces such as parks and community gardens received greater attention. The range of actors considered also widened to encompass urban residents from different sociocultural backgrounds, as well as planners and managers. Questions about how residents use green spaces, how different groups perceive and value urban nature, and who takes part in planning, management, and long-term stewardship became increasingly important. This growing body of research helped clarify the concept of UBCD and the analytical framework developed around it.

4 Conceptual Positioning and Analytical Framework of UBCD

4.1 Conceptual Positioning and Complementary Contribution of UBCD

As BCD has been extended into urban contexts, both the subjects of enquiry and the questions asked have shifted. Research has increasingly examined how different groups use, understand, and shape urban nature, and how these relationships change with social composition, ways of life, and management arrangements^[48,^50]. Values, experiences, everyday practices, and participation have also become important concerns^[52–^53]. UBCD thus brings human–nature relationships in particular places more clearly into focus.

Biodiversity describes variation within living systems, including differences among species and habitats, whereas cultural diversity encompasses differences among social groups in values, knowledge systems, and everyday practices. UBCD does not simply add these two forms of diversity together. Instead, it asks how they are connected and change through people's everyday interactions with nature. In cities, different groups assign meanings to green spaces through their use, experience, interpretation, and stewardship, and may thereby also alter their material form and ecological characteristics. Thus, even green spaces with similar biophysical conditions and user populations may sustain different human–nature relationships and stewardship practices. The "diversity" at issue in UBCD refers not only to variation in biological and cultural attributes but also to the multiple, changing ways in which people live with and shape nature^[50]. From this perspective, UBCD overlaps with biodiversity, ecosystem services, and NCP, while differing in its analytical emphasis^[3,³⁷,⁴⁹–⁵⁰,⁵²–⁵³,⁶⁴–^67] (Table 2).

This positioning also has implications for how UBCD is studied. Previous studies have used indicators covering species, habitats, spatial use, and participation to analyze urban green spaces^[62]. Yet the principal aim of UBCD research is not to measure static correspondences between biological and cultural diversity^[58]. Elands et al. describe BCD as a "sensitizing and reflexive" concept: it provides a way of approaching a research problem in its particular context rather than prescribing a uniform set of benchmarks^[52–^53]. Indicators and aggregate scores can support comparisons across sites, while examining individual indicators and site-specific evidence remains important for interpreting differences and their possible explanations^[62].

The complementary contribution of UBCD, therefore, is neither to add a separate set of cultural-diversity indicators to urban green space assessments nor to replace established biodiversity monitoring or ecosystem services assessment. Rather, it is to understand green spaces as places continually shaped by ecological processes, everyday practices, and governance actions. Alongside questions about what is present and what a green space provides, UBCD addresses how that space has come to take its present form, how different actors develop relationships with nature, and how those relationships are affected by planning and management arrangements. It thus brings local knowledge, multiple values, and differences in everyday practices into the analysis of urban green spaces and reflection on their governance.

4.2 Materialized, Lived, and Stewardship BCD

The GREEN SURGE project and related studies distinguish three interrelated dimensions of UBCD: materialized BCD, lived BCD, and stewardship BCD^[52,⁵⁶–^57]. The framework brings observable material expressions, everyday experiences, and active stewardship into a shared analytical structure, allowing ecological conditions, lived practices, and stewardship activities in particular places to be considered in relation to one another (Fig. 6).

Materialized BCD concerns identifiable and measurable biophysical expressions, together with associated cultural or technical artefacts. Lived BCD, at the center of the framework, encompasses people's everyday encounters with, uses of, and experiences in green spaces, including the values, norms, traditions, and knowledge involved. Stewardship BCD concerns people's active involvement in shaping and maintaining green spaces, including motivations, values, actions, norms, and knowledge at both individual and collective levels^[52]. Stewardship here extends beyond routine maintenance to deliberate efforts by different actors to protect, create, and modify places. The three dimensions may influence one another in particular settings: material conditions shape everyday use and experience; values, knowledge, and place meanings developed through lived experience may inform stewardship; and sustained stewardship may, in turn, change spatial form and biophysical conditions.

These potential interactions also mean that the dimensions cannot be treated as entirely separate. Lived BCD and stewardship BCD overlap in their concern with values, motivations, actions, and norms^[52]. Subsequent research has cautioned that simply placing quantitative biophysical data alongside qualitative sociocultural accounts does not necessarily reveal the relationships between them^[53]. More recent work has likewise suggested that values and sense of place may span both lived and stewardship dimensions^[63]. The framework is valuable not merely for distinguishing three domains of inquiry, but for directing attention to whether and how they are connected, which practices and institutional arrangements shape these connections, and how they change over time or generate feedback. It provides a starting point for relational analysis; it does not presume reciprocal shaping in every setting, nor does it constitute a causal model or a theory of governance.

The three-dimensional framework does not rule out quantification. Subsequent research has operationalized it as an indicator-based decision-support tool for individual urban green spaces, allowing assessment benchmarks to be adapted to site-specific contexts^[62]. Such applications serve purposes that differ from those of comprehensive city-scale assessment tools. The City Biodiversity Index (CBI), also known as the Singapore Index, for instance, was developed primarily for city-level self-assessment and ongoing monitoring. Its 2021 edition comprises 28 indicators covering native biodiversity, ecosystem services, and biodiversity governance and management^[68]. The CBI facilitates the establishment of citywide baselines and the monitoring of change, while site-level applications of UBCD place greater emphasis on the connections among materialized, lived and stewardship BCD in their particular contexts (Fig. 7).

At the site scale, residents' participation and cultural dynamics become more readily apparent^[48]. Community green spaces are closely connected to everyday life: vegetation and spatial conditions, residents' actual uses, and the stewardship activities of different actors often intersect in the same place. The three-dimensional framework makes it possible to examine these elements as interrelated processes. A community green space thus comprises more than its existing vegetation and spatial form; it also involves the ways people use and care for the place in relation to its material conditions. These relationships may continue to change as everyday life and management arrangements evolve.

4.3 Implications of UBCD for Community Green Space Improvement

UBCD brings the material conditions, lived experiences, and stewardship practices of everyday green spaces into relation. For community green space improvement, this broadens what is understood as a site's existing conditions. Community green spaces have measurable ecological and spatial characteristics, but they also embody established patterns of use, value judgements, and stewardship relationships. These relationships often predate a regeneration project and may be altered as it proceeds. Decisions based solely on vegetation cover, species composition, and facilities and spatial form risk overlooking aspects of place that matter to everyday use and subsequent stewardship. The task, therefore, is not simply to document plants, residents' uses, and cultural meanings separately, but to examine how these relationships have developed, who sustains them, and which existing human–nature relationships renewal might retain, modify or interrupt.

4.4 Existing Conditions and Actual Use

Judgements about existing environments cannot rest on material conditions alone. Different groups may use the same green space in different ways and attach different values to it; even among people with similar cultural backgrounds, individual experience, ways of life, and social circumstances can produce differences^[7]. Historical records, customary uses, and broad cultural categories may therefore offer useful clues, but cannot substitute for an understanding of present-day practices. Planning and design need to establish which spaces continue to accommodate movement, rest, social interaction or cultivation; which natural features have become connected to everyday use and care; which established relationships are weakening; and what new needs are emerging. This does not mean that everything already present should be retained, or that cultural meaning should be attributed in advance to every place or natural feature. Understanding these relationships provides a sounder basis for decisions about what to retain, modify or introduce, so that ecological improvement and spatial enhancement remain grounded in everyday life.

4.5 Participation and Responsibilities of Different Actors

UBCD brings residents, planners, managers, and other actors into the analysis. Participation is more than a procedural arrangement; it also concerns how different actors contribute knowledge, mobilize resources, and take responsibility. Residents and other regular users are familiar with long-standing uses and subtle changes in a place. Professionals contribute ecological, spatial, and technical judgement, while community organizations and management agencies coordinate local activities, address community affairs, and organize projects. Research on community gardens shows that governance arrangements and actors' roles change across the stages of planning and design, implementation, and management^[69]. The aims and policy instruments of participation likewise vary across stages of green infrastructure projects^[70]. Collaboration between local governments and civic initiatives is also shaped by access to land, funding, knowledge, and institutional rules^[71].

Governance, in this context, is not synonymous with routine management and maintenance after construction. It also concerns how improvement objectives are established, who makes decisions, how different forms of knowledge and competing demands enter the process, and how action and responsibility are distributed. Effective participation is not determined simply by the number of participants, nor does it require everyone to be involved in the same way throughout a project. More pertinent questions are whose use of a place will be affected, which experiences and forms of knowledge can change a proposed scheme, how conflicting objectives will be negotiated, how implementation requirements will be met, and who will assume responsibility after completion. Participation becomes substantively relevant to governance when different actors' knowledge and needs influence design decisions, professional and managerial support can be mobilized, and responsibilities for implementation and long-term stewardship can be sustained.

4.6 Long-Term Stewardship and Spatial Adjustment

Green spaces continue to change after construction is complete. Plants grow, patterns of use shift, and management resources and participating actors may change. Research on green infrastructure has shown that participation extends across the project life cycle and takes different forms at different stages^[70]. Studies of blue–green infrastructure have also identified links between everyday practices, place meanings, and residents' willingness to engage in stewardship^[72].

Stewardship therefore needs to be considered from the outset. The labor, resources, and professional support likely to be available over time can influence spatial form, the arrangement of natural features and the complexity of facilities. Pruning, replacement planting, changes of use or partial spatial reconfiguration after completion do not necessarily indicate that the original design has failed; they may instead be adaptive responses to plant growth and changes in patterns of use or management conditions.

UBCD offers a relational perspective for observing and making judgements about community green space improvement, rather than a fixed procedure to follow. Ecological conditions, everyday life, and continuing stewardship need to be considered together, in relation to particular places and the ways they change over time. Culture is not a separate component added to green spaces, but is expressed in how different groups use, understand, and care for nature. For the improvement of existing communities in China, such a relational, dynamic, and context-sensitive perspective can help spatial improvements respond more closely to everyday use while giving due attention to actors' responsibilities and long-term stewardship.

5 Conclusions

Drawing on a broad corpus of 1, 180 BCD-related publications and 71 urban-focused publications, this review combined bibliometric analysis with close readings of representative studies to trace the intellectual development through which BCD has been extended into urban contexts and UBCD has taken shape. The findings indicate that this expansion involves more than a change in study setting. As parks, community gardens, and other everyday green spaces have become important research settings, greater attention has been paid to urban residents, planners, and managers as actors. Experiences of use, value judgements, participation, and stewardship practices have become important to understanding human–nature relationships in cities. UBCD thus foregrounds their relational, dynamic, and context-sensitive character, while the materialized–lived–stewardship framework provides a useful structure for analyzing them in particular places.

These insights also provide a broader basis for decisions about community green space improvement. Ecological and spatial conditions need to be examined alongside actual uses, participation, and long-term stewardship; decisions about what to retain, modify or introduce should take account of relationships already established in a place. In the improvement of community green spaces in China, completion of a project does not fix human–nature relationships once and for all. Green spaces continue to change through everyday use and ongoing stewardship. Nor should culture be treated as an additional, separate consideration: it is expressed in how different groups use, understand, and care for nature.

For community green space improvement in China, UBCD does not call for replacing existing ecological assessment or planning and management approaches with another composite index. Rather, it calls for reconsidering the questions that guide improvement practices. Alongside what to retain, modify or introduce, practitioners need to ask whose knowledge and experience inform these decisions, which human–nature relationships they may affect, and who will participate in implementation and assume long-term responsibility. This review accordingly positions UBCD as a complementary analytical perspective connecting ecological understanding, local lived experience and reflection on governance, rather than as an independent and fully developed theory of governance. Given the restriction of the literature search to English-language WoS publications and the geographical distribution of existing UBCD research, the relevance of this perspective to different Chinese cities and community improvement contexts requires further examination.

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