Carolina Figueroa Arango (CEO of SELVAR and Co-Chair of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas’ Urban Conservation Strategies Specialist Group), and Sebastián Oyola (SELVAR collaborator), co-wrote this article with Hoda Gray, also Co-Chair of the IUCN’s Urban Conservation Strategies Specialist Group, and Amie Kusch, a master’s student at the University of Washington. The article was developed under the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas’ Urban Conservation Strategies Specialist Group.

This article, published in the journal PARKS, addresses a central question for conservation in cities: is a specific IUCN category or some other form of formal international recognition needed to effectively recognize, manage, and integrate Urban Protected Areas (UPAs) in urban zones?

Based on a literature review and interviews with experts from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Canada, Singapore, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, the authors analyze the arguments for and against categorization and recommend strategies aligned with a flexible approach that shifts the focus of urban conservation from a biophysical perspective to a socio-ecological one.