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This spring, Clever Cities Quito held seven workshops with urban innovation partnership (UIPs) members in order to gain knowledge about the current state of NbS related activities and projects in Quito. The UIP is a co-creative group made up of local stakeholders and helps ensure that Quito’s CLEVER activities reflect local priorities and needs.

The feedback offered by the team will lay the groundwork for Quito and Yes Innovation to build an Urban NbS Plan that considers local perceptions of green space. It will also inform how the plan can help mainstream NbS following current best practices. Moreover, this activity allowed Clever Cities to strengthen relations with key local stakeholders for future NbS related developments.

These workshops were led by the Municipality of Quito/Fondo Ambiental in partnership with Yes Innovation. Leadership company Noru helped ensure the workshops were engaging and dynamic.

Workshops covered the following thematic ground:

• Municipal Institutions and Policy
• Operational Municipal Institutions and Policy Implementation
• Non-Governmental Organizations and NbS
• Engaging Civil Society
• Working with Financing Institutions
• Community Voices: San Enrique de Velasco
• Tomorrow’s Cities: Learnings from Academia

These workshops helped Quito to gather much needed local information and perspectives regarding the Urban NbS Plan, so that Quito might maximise local priorities, needs, and implementation pathways. In addition, the Financing Institutions workshop gathered recommendations from both international and local financing and development institutions. Their input will inform the NbS Finance and Investment Strategy for Quito. Both documents are expected to be finished in the final months of Clever Cities. They will then be presented to policy makers so that this work can be fully integrated into local policy. The cocreative work involved in the development of these strategies will also be featured at the project’s final conference: Nature in the City — Advancing Social Impact through Nature-based Solutions, Sept. 26-27 in Hamburg, Germany.