Built-environment professionals welcome prescriptive ecology evidence to enhance communication with stakeholders for biodiversity-inclusive cities: Insights from professionals in both the Global North and South

In our urbanized world, cities pose threats and opportunities for global biodiversity. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework advocates for biodiversity-inclusive urban planning and design (BIPD) to enhance native biodiversity and sustainable urbanization. However, creating effective biodiversity-inclusive urban landscapes is challenging. Despite the growing knowledge advances in urban ecology, its effective application in urban planning practices remains inadequate. Therefore, understanding the perspectives of Built-environment professionals (BEPs), who are typically responsible for urban transformations, towards BIPD is essential. This study employs Q-Methodology to explore a broad profile of BEPs’ perspectives in the United States, Spain, China and Ethiopia, across the Global North and South, using citizen-science-based species distribution modeling (SDM) mapping as an example. We identified four perspectives among BEPs: Pluralist , Enthusiast , Pragmatist and Contextualist , offering insights into the challenges and opportunities of implementing BIPD. A key challenge for BEPs is their limited awareness of critical ecological knowledge, alongside two other issues: structural barriers and misaligned values and attitudes with stakeholders. Importantly, our study highlights promising opportunities. BEPs’ positive attitudes toward BIPD reflect their readiness for adaptive innovations. Their diverse value patterns and professional norms suggest a willingness to pursue transformative changes. BEPs particularly welcome applicable evidence-based tools to facilitate effective stakeholder communications and trade-off decisions, while Pluralists and Enthusiasts also show interest in multidisciplinary collaborations. This nuanced understanding of challenges and opportunities can facilitate transdisciplinary knowledge awareness and foster knowledge advancement, ultimately paving the way for mainstreaming BIPD as a key innovation for urban sustainability.