Connected but Misaligned: Rethinking Urban Nature for Biodiversity, Equity, and Resilience

Allen Glen Cumaya Gil

Urban nature is often planned through partial forms of connectivity: habitat corridors for biodiversity, green infrastructure networks for ecosystem services, accessibility networks for public use, and governance networks for implementation. Yet connected urban nature can still fail. Connectivity misalignment occurs when connections in one domain coexist with disconnection, inequity, risk, weak monitoring, or weak governance in another. This Perspective proposes connectivity alignment as a diagnostic and planning framework for urban nature. The framework evaluates ecological, benefit-flow, socio-cultural, and governance connectivity through equity, scale, and safety-risk lenses. It identifies two recurring forms of misalignment: incomplete connectivity, where necessary connections are absent, weak, uneven, or mismatched; and harmful connectivity, where connections transmit risk, disturbance, exclusion, or burden. The paper then introduces alignment audits as a practical process for diagnosing misalignment and guiding planning responses, including connection, realignment, buffering, redesign, filtering, monitoring, coordination, funding, accountability, and selective disconnection.