Nature-Based Solutions for Climate-Resilient Cities: A Comprehensive State-of-the-Art Review of Landscape Architecture and Urban Adaptation Strategies

Cities face escalating climate risks, including heat stress, pluvial and fluvial flooding, drought, and biodiversity loss, that conventional grey infrastructure alone cannot address. Landscape architecture occupies a distinctive position at the interface of ecology, urban design, and engineering, translating nature-based solutions (NBS) principles into implementable urban form. This paper presents a state-of-the-art review of peer-reviewed and grey literature, concentrated in the last five years, on the role of landscape architecture in operationalizing NBS for urban climate adaptation. Drawing on a broad survey of major scientific databases and a narrative, thematic synthesis of the retrieved corpus, the review identifies dominant NBS typologies (green roofs and walls, urban forests, bioretention systems, constructed wetlands, sponge city networks, and blue-green corridors), the design and governance mechanisms through which landscape architects mainstream these interventions, and the persistent barriers, financial, regulatory, technical, and social, that constrain scaled implementation. The review further maps geographic and methodological imbalances in the current evidence base and proposes a research agenda oriented toward performance quantification, cross-scale integration, and equity-centred design. The findings are intended to support researchers, practitioners, and policymakers engaged in the design of climate-resilient urban landscapes.