What Is B2N about? An Introduction

Dear Reader,

welcome to our ‘Behind The Scenes’ section. Here we keep you updated on how our research project unfolds during the next four years. More importantly, we provide access to the often hidden life of a research project, because typically we only get to see and hear about the outcomes of a research project through journal articles, conference presentations and the like.

To begin this series, I will give you some insights into the main points of this project. The official description of the B2N project is here. Next, I will briefly describe what this actually means.

In a nutshell:

Our research focuses on the process of creating new ecosystems and ecosystem services in cities.
In particular, we look at how different stakeholders, such as companies, public organisations, local community etc. are involved in this process.
And ultimately, we are interested in how and what kinds of value is created with these stakeholders in the processes of creating new ecosystems.

This will be studied in three cases of urban ecosystems:

Quarry restorations
Emerging activity for aggregate companies to mitigate their impacts and to develop new business
Storm water systems
Developing activity involving companies and public organisations
Green roofs
Established way of creating new ecosystem services