An Open Call for Urban Green Stewardship Projects
World Urban Parks is proud to support the promotion of initiatives that strengthen collaborative management of urban green spaces. For this reason, we are sharing this open call from the What’s That Green? Governance Lab, which seeks exemplary projects of co-stewardship and shared maintenance in parks and urban green areas around the world.
If you are involved in an effort where communities, institutions, and other actors work together to care for a green space, this is an opportunity to showcase your work and connect with an international network dedicated to collaborative governance.
Below, you’ll find the full details of this open call.
About the Open Call
What’s That Green? Governance Lab is excited to launch an open call for projects that demonstrate good practice in the long-term co-care and co-maintenance of urban green spaces together with civil society.
We are not looking for governance models where green spaces are solely managed by public or private actors, nor where citizens are acting entirely on their own.
Our focus is on blended stewardship models – where cities, private organizations, and civil society care for green spaces together.
What we’re looking For:
We welcome projects that include, but are not limited to:
- Maintenance and care: joint actions that keep the green space healthy and functional.
- Inclusion and activation: collaborative initiatives that bring people together and encourage shared use, appreciation, and care of the space.
- Monitoring and assessment: cooperative efforts to observe and evaluate ecological, social, or governance aspects.
Why Participate?
- Be visible: Get featured on a global stewardship digital map*, be integrated into an exhibition on Nature-based Solutions**, and be covered in the What’s That Green? Blog & Podcast.***
- Connect: Join a worldwide community of cities, organizations, and citizens co-caring for urban nature.
- Exchange: Take part in international thematic dialogues on collaborative stewardship, share lessons and learn from each other****.
Contribute: Inform future research and academic publications.
* Only projects that meet the Open Call criteria and provide complete information will be published on the map.
** Your contribution will be considered for integration into an exhibition on Nature-based Solutions that The Nature of Cities (TNOC) is currently preparing under the Horizon Europe project NetworkNaturePLUS. The final selection will be made by TNOC.
*** Selected projects will be invited to participate.
**** Topics and schedule will be announced later on.
Eligibility:
- Applicants must be directly involved in the project and possess first-hand knowledge of its collaborative processes.
- Projects from every country in the world are welcome, but they must be situated in an urban and peri-urban area.
- Projects may include any type of urban green space.
- Projects must be in the post-implementation phase, with civil society actively participating in management, use, or care.
- The collaboration with civil society should have been ongoing for at least one year, demonstrating sustained shared stewardship.
Submission Process:
- Submit your urban green stewardship project via the google form
- Deadline: submit by the 14 February 2026, 9pm CET / 3 PM EST
- Any questions about the Open Call can be emailed to governancelab@whatisthatgreen.com
