A study from Leibniz University Hannover and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) looks at biodiversity in urban spaces. The author from TUM is Prof. Monika Egerer, Professor of Urban Productive Ecosystems in Freising-Weihenstephan.
Urbanisation and the accompanying loss of biodiversity are among the most urgent challenges of our time. While the majority of the world’s population lives in cities, the habitats of animals and plants are increasingly under pressure due to the expansion of urban settlements. Against this backdrop, the concept of the 15-minute city aims to serve as a guide for sustainable urban development and design neighbourhoods so that the most important activities can be reached by bike or on foot in a maximum of 15 minutes.
In practice, the focus is almost always on human needs: mobility, infrastructure and services. A study carried out at Leibniz University Hannover and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) provides new ideas and shows how the 15-minute city and biodiversity can be combined. The results were recently published in Nature Communications.
Prof. Dr. Nadja Kabisch, professor of digital landscape ecology at the LUH Institute of Earth System Sciences, and Prof. Dr. Monika Egerer, professor of urban productive ecosystems at TUM, have jointly developed four starting points for systematically integrating nature into the concept of the 15-minute city:
Animals also benefit from short routes
Just as humans benefit from short routes, many animals and plants need habitats in nearby surroundings that they can actually reach. Wild bees or beetles fly only a few hundred metres, and small mammals such as hedgehogs move through public green spaces, gardens and forests. A dense network of small, connected green spaces is essential to biological diversity.
Small spaces make a big contribution
Big parks are valuable, but having numerous small green spaces, greened tree pits, front yards and community gardens within a neighbourhood can have an enormous joint impact, both for humans and for the ecological network.
Diversity is what counts
Different native plant species, a varied structure with trees, shrubs and ground cover and additional elements such as wildflower verges and dead wood strengthen biological diversity. A diversity of offers and uses can simultaneously enrich humans’ social lives and leisure activities.
Promoting biodiversity with technology and citizen science
Intelligent tools such as sensors, apps and citizen science platforms offer additional possibilities: they help with observing and monitoring biodiversity, recognising stress (for example, drought stress in trees), optimising planting and watering, and dynamically integrating ecological goals into urban planning and green-space maintenance.
These points are counterbalanced by challenges that still require solutions. Examples include the dense development of cities, limited space and tight municipal budgets. External stipulations regarding urban development can also make ambitious action difficult.
The researchers suggest integrating nearby residents into the processes, taking local ecosystems and social conditions into account, and implementing measures such as habitat islands, pop-up projects and citizen actions as a first step. These should ideally be accompanied by monitoring that measures quality of life and biodiversity results to assess what works.
The study was recently published in Nature Communications:
Kabisch, N., Egerer, M.: Resetting the clock by integrating urban nature and its biodiversity into the 15-minute city concept. Nat Commun 16, 9281 (2025). doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-65170-8
