Gara Villalba participates in the "Cities on the Frontline 2025 - Renaturing Cities"

Gara Villalba, researcher at ICTA-UAB, will take part in a new session of the Speaker Series "Cities on the Frontline 2025 - Renaturing Cities" to present how the NUTRISOIL project is regenerating urban soils by reusing organic waste and strengthening local food systems.

Speaker Series: "Cities on the Frontline 2025 - Renaturing Cities"

Case study: Urban and Peri-Urban AgricultureSpeaker: Gara Villalba, ICTA-UAB researcher

• Date: Thursday, May 15th 2025
• Time: 9AM EDT / 3PM CEST / 9 PM SGT 
• Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/9017394418581/WN_7XI9N4r3Su6hLTAAirBHyg

Ecosystems have long been treated as resources to extract from, rather than vital living systems we’re part of. Now, cities are feeling the pressure. Climate shocks, biodiversity loss and shrinking natural resources are pushing urban systems to their limits. It’s clear we need to rethink how we build and how we live with nature.

In the fourth session of Cities on the Frontline 2025, we’ll explore how renaturing cities—bringing nature back into urban environments—can help restore ecosystems, build resilience and improve quality of life. This session will highlight how cities are embedding nature into urban planning through both high-level strategies and localized solutions that put biodiversity at the center of urban development.

• Gara Villalba, Professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and researcher at ICTA-UAB, will present how the NUTRISOIL project is regenerating urban soils by reusing organic waste and strengthening local food systems.
• María Angélica Mejía, Regional Curator for Latin America and the Caribbean at The Nature of Cities, will share how the BiodiverCities initiative is helping cities restore nature, support green economies and engage communities through citizen science.

Join us to explore why renaturing is both possible and essential for building healthier, more livable and more resilient cities.

Case Study: "Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture

Urban and peri-urban agriculture (UA) offers cities a powerful tool to boost local food autonomy, reduce environmental impacts, and close the loop on nutrient cycles by recovering valuable resources from urban waste. Yet, despite the vast nutrient potential in EU cities' organic waste and wastewater, only a fraction is currently recycled into UA, due to technical, logistical, and institutional barriers. A key challenge lies in the degraded state of urban soils, which lack the organic carbon needed to effectively absorb and utilize recovered nutrients. The NUTRISOIL project, building on findings from the ERC-funded URBAG initiative, addresses this issue by promoting soil regeneration using decomposable organic matter from urban pruning residues. This technical approach is paired with a social strategy that brings together urban farmers, waste managers, policy makers, and regulators to co-create practical pathways for nutrient circularity. I will share the outcomes from this project, both the technical and the stakeholder driven materials resulting from our workshops.