Cities are increasingly recognised for providing a home to important biodiversity. The future of many threatened species will depend on actions to accommodate their needs within urban boundaries. Simultaneously, the recently released Greater Adelaide Regional Plan (GARP) (2025) identifies the need for 315,000 new residential dwellings to be built by 2055 to accommodate the pressing need for more affordable housing. Therefore, without conscious efforts to mainstream the protection and enhancement of habitat through new residential development, Adelaide’s biodiversity will continue to decline. Embedding tools, such as Biodiversity Sensitive Urban Design (BSUD) through the SA planning system and supporting state agencies and local councils to use it as part of their own public realm and infrastructure projects is critical.

Through case studies and practical examples, this presentation will share how Green Adelaide has worked with a diverse, multi-disciplinary group of government and non-government practitioners to investigate where new policy levers, particularly within the land-use planning system are needed to achieve better biodiversity outcomes. These strategies and actions are captured within the recently released Urban Greening Strategy for Metro Adelaide (2025) and the GARP. Green Adelaide also commissioned RMIT’s ICON Science group to prepare the Blueprint for a Nature-Positive Adelaide to strengthen the available knowledge to support better urban biodiversity outcomes in metropolitan Adelaide. This involved researching and capturing the barriers and opportunities to achieving nature-positive developments and detailing these through 16 case studies. Recently Green Adelaide commissioned a consortium of landscape architects, urban ecologists and urban planners to work together to develop BSUD guidelines (and pilot these on a real-life master planned development) as a multi-disciplinary approach is needed to solve these barriers and harness these opportunities. RMIT will provide a research lens over this work as part of their recently announced successful Industry Laureate Fellowship application.

Biodiverse cities are healthy cities, but how do we include provisions for nature in urban planning and design? Providing people with every-day access to biodiversity has multiple economic, health and wellbeing benefits, but creating space for nature in towns and cities can be complicated. Designing for biodiversity from the beginning of the urban development process helps ensure that key requirements for nature can be included synergistically while meeting other development needs. The Biodiversity Sensitive Urban Design (BSUD) framework provides a method for improving the inclusion of ecological knowledge within urban design. The flexible framework can be applied across different development types, translating ecological needs into urban design actions using a set of five key principles.

The intersection of ecological theory with urban design has great potential for the delivery of biodiversity conservation benefits during urban development. Using a flagship urban renewal in Perth, Western Australia, we demonstrate how spatial mapping of ecological connectivity can be used to aid design decision-making by quantifying the contribution of different landscape architecture and master planning options to biodiversity. Design scenarios tested include different tree retention plans, and alternating the typology of streetscape and public open space designs within the development footprint. With input from industry partners, we explore how this approach could be integrated into the early stages of development master planning and used to inform Green Building Council Australia “Green Star” accreditation – mainstreaming the application of BSUD.

Urban nature offers critical benefits for city residents and plays a key role in city liveability. However, biodiversity in cities can also bring disservices, including the potential to elevate infectious disease risk. In this presentation, we explore these intersecting narratives, arguing that the benefits and risks of biodiverse urban areas need not be in conflict. Drawing on a narrative literature review, we identify five interactions of concern linking urban nature features to zoonotic and vector-borne disease risk: domestic and companion animal interfaces, urban scavenger and resource attraction, wildlife encroachment and habitat adaptation, vector amplification, and human behaviours that increase risk. We then outline a range of urban design and planning actions that can reduce these risks while maintaining the co-benefits of urban greening. Discussing the issue alongside a One Health perspective, we emphasise the need for an integrated, cross-sector approach to create resilient cities that support human, animal, and environmental wellbeing. We conclude that adaptive urban management can help mitigate disease concerns while maximising the many benefits provided by urban nature.

Efforts to promote biodiversity in urban greenspaces are often dominated by approaches focusing on intensively managed spaces supporting iconic species. This approach neglects a ubiquitous feature of urban ecosystems, informal green spaces (IGS), which are often seen as having limited biodiversity value, owing to the communities of opportunistic and exotic species they support. We assessed the biodiversity of IGS in railway corridors in Greater Sydney, identifying what they currently support and their potential for enhancement. We sampled 150 sites along the 56km T1 Sydney Trains Network, between Central (CBD) and Penrith (Western Sydney). We recorded structural features and flora within the 25m bounds of the site. We also sampled nearby formal green spaces for pairwise reference comparisons to their IGS counterparts. Canopy cover and surrounding greenspace extent were also mapped to identify the contribution IGS made to the greater urban forest. We found that IGS were dominated by invasive species (42%), including 30% of all sightings being noxious weeds. There was substantial spatial variability of some plant species occurrences (e.g. bindweeds), while others were consistently recorded. However, IGS also supported substantial numbers of mature native trees, particularly in IGS in Western Sydney, where the contribution of IGS to the overall urban forest was substantial. While these results support predictions that invasive species would comprise a large percentage of IGS floral assemblages, our data revealed that IGS was habitat for a substantial number of native and protected species. IGS contributed greatly to connecting Sydney’s remaining green spaces and present enormous opportunities for enhancement and small-scale restoration. Priorities for these include removal of invasive vines, coupled with targeted replanting efforts. Overall, we suggest that the inclusion of IGS into strategies promoting biodiversity in urban ecosystems is an underexplored opportunity for land managers and ecologists.

As human populations and associated urbanisation continues to expand across the globe, insectivorous bats have demonstrated remarkable flexibility adapting to anthropogenic roosts, leading to heightened rates of bat-human interactions. However, the extent to which anthropogenic roosting has been adopted across Australian bat species remains unknown, as records of bats roosting in anthropogenic structures are not consistently reported in Australia. To better understand what characteristics of anthropogenic structures support bat roosts, habitat suitability models were used to examine the relative urban tolerance and roosting habitat suitability for each genus. We collected 439 records of bat roosts in anthropogenic structures across South East Queensland, compiling data from previous publications, local governments, citizen science, wildlife hospitals and rescue groups from 2019 to 2025. Nine genera of bats were found to utilise eleven types of anthropogenic roosts in the region, with distinct genus-specific roost type preferences. Scotorepens and Myotis were the most commonly reported bat genera in man-made roosts, and appeared to have the highest level of urban roosting tolerance. Other, more specialist genera, showed more high sensitivity to urbanised areas and intensive land use types, utilising anthropogenic roosts only in rural areas. Surrounding habitat was an important predictor of roost presence, with key habitat features varying by roost type. Genus-specific roost type and site preferences should be taken into account when conserving potential bat roosting habitat, and predicting future areas of increased bat-human conflict.

Species from critically endangered plant communities can be restored to cities in biodiverse native wildflower meadows. This requires interventions to modify urban soils to reduce weed competition, by either removing nutrient-enriched topsoils (scalping) or covering site soils with low nutrient substrates (capping), before target species are sown or planted. Whilst mined substrates can be used, our current research is exploring potential to use recycled construction waste products as capping materials to support native meadow establishment. Greater local reuse of construction wastes would reduce landfill, as well as carbon emissions associated with waste transport and supply of mined products. To be suitable capping materials, recycled construction wastes must contain few weed seeds and be low in macronutrients that support weed proliferation. Recycled construction waste products can also exhibit characteristics such as high alkalinity that challenge plant growth. Robust testing is needed to screen recycled products before they are used for capping. Accordingly, we tested the capacity for 20 grassland species to establish in three construction wastes: crushed basalt rock (crusher dust), a recycled clay and a subsoil. We evaluated the species richness of weeds emerging in recycled products, before filled seeds were sown in two depths of crushed basalt dust and recycled clay (40 & 100 mm) as well as a single depth of subsoil (100 mm). We monitored plant emergence and survival before harvesting plants at 14 weeks to determine relative growth outcomes. 40 mm crusher dust supported good growth in a range of species, and enhanced survival relative to recycled clay treatments in half of the sown species. These results have supported further work to evaluate crusher dust as a capping material for the creation of native wildflower meadows, expanding the possibility that widely available recycled waste products could support urban greening and biodiversity restoration projects in future.