From Policy to Action: Co-Designing Research With Local Government to Advance Urban Greening

Urban greenspaces are widely recognised for their benefits to public health, the environment and climate resilience and are supported by strong policy commitments across federal, state and local governments. However, Australian cities continue to experience net greenspace loss, reflecting a gap between policy commitments and implementation. A key contributor to this gap is the systematic undervaluation of greenspace and urban trees within local government decision-making, particularly where their health, environmental and social benefits are not adequately reflected in economic assessments. This study aimed to develop a locally relevant economic framework and tools to support local governments' efforts to operationalise their urban greening policy goals.

A co-design methodology was applied over an 18-month period with the City of Salisbury and the City of Unley local governments in Adelaide, Australia. The process included co-design workshops and other stakeholder engagement activities, to co-develop economic scenarios, iteratively refine an economic modelling framework and collaboratively develop a prototype decision-support tool and associated communication resources.

The co-design process enabled shared problem framing, led to the development of locally relevant economic scenarios, and refined model assumptions to reflect operational realities of the councils. Outputs included: (1) an economic modelling framework to quantify costs and benefits of urban trees; (2) a prototype Urban Greening Decision-Making Tool and (3) tailored communication resources (including fact sheets, infographics and a policy brief).

This case study demonstrates that bridging the policy-implementation gap requires more than producing evidence; it requires researchers to work in genuine, trust-based partnership with practitioners. This involves approaching collaboration with humility and flexibility, listening to partners' priorities and co-creating research and outputs.