Priorities for peri-urban recreation ecology research, policy, and practice in a transforming world

Context: Peri-urban landscapes are increasingly expected to support both outdoor recreation and biodiversity conservation. Different trade-offs and potential synergies between these two objectives call for a clear, interdisciplinary, and comprehensive framework for the design, management, and stewardship of such landscapes to better support outdoor recreation and biodiversity conservation. Objectives: The aim of this work was to explore the most important interdisciplinary priorities for advancing peri-urban recreation ecology research in relation to policy and practice, and provide a basis for investigating the interrelations among these priorities to assess compatibility and coherence. Methods: We designed and ran a session about the future of peri-urban recreation ecology, held in September 2024, at the 12th International Conference on Monitoring and Management of Visitors in Recreational and Protected Areas. In the session, we explored the most important limitations and opportunities in this field and identified ten priorities for the future. After the session, we continued the discussions virtually, from September 2024 to June 2025 and complemented them with a review of the recent literature. Results and Conclusion: We propose ten priorities for the future: (1) conceptualizing a social-ecological system approach, (2) developing a comprehensive, interdisciplinary framework, (3) enhancing participatory and data-driven knowledge, (4) developing indicators, metrics and models, (5) measuring the impacts of urban-nature proximity, (6) developing site-specific land-use strategies, (7) understanding the impacts of social media, (8) building capacity for unforeseen changes, (9) improving sustainable multifunctionality, and (10) supporting environmental justice.