A tale of two restorations: Urban biodiversity underpins ecosystem restoration and promotes psychological restoration

Growing urbanisation impacts both human health and biodiversity. Urban environments are currently home to 55% of the world’s human population, and many cities are located within the world’s biodiversity ‘hotspots’. Thus, urban planning for current and future cities demands concepts and actions that foster co-benefits for both people and nature. From an ecological perspective, cities may want to restore urban ecosystems through, for example, adding biodiversity elements (native plant diversity, structural complexity) to improve depleted ecosystem functioning and enhance ecosystem resilience. From a psychological perspective, research shows that contact with natural environments can promote people’s psychological restoration and enhance psychological resilience. In this chapter, the parallels between ecosystem restoration and psychological restoration in urban environments are explored. The ecological and psychological perspectives are bridged through the concepts of restoration and resilience, with urban biodiversity as a fundamental link between the two that can offer win-wins for urban planning. Evidence from the literature and case studies on ecosystem restoration initiatives, biophilic design concepts, urban garden social-ecological research, and nature-based social prescriptions demonstrates how a co-benefit approach to planning and managing city environments can support biodiverse urban ecosystems that create opportunity for psychological restoration and human health.