Green Urban Renewal and Policy Coherence Across Climate, Water, and Spatial Planning: The Case of Zagreb, Croatia

Green urban renewal requires coordination among climate adaptation, water management, biodiversity conservation, and spatial planning within coherent policy frameworks. This study presents a structured analytical framework for evaluating how nature-based solutions (NbS) and natural water retention measures (NWRM) are represented in local and national policy documents relevant to green urban renewal, using Zagreb, Croatia, as a case study. The analysis combined qualitative content analysis, semi-quantitative assessment, and comparative policy-coherence analysis of strategic, planning, and legislative documents. Recent strategic documents showed the broadest documentary coverage of climate adaptation, biodiversity conservation, sustainable water management, and green infrastructure, whereas legislative and statutory planning documents contained more function-specific provisions. Economic feasibility, adaptive management, and several implementation-related provisions were less consistently represented. Cross-level comparison further identified stronger alignment between several recent Zagreb strategic documents and national climate and water policy documents. The study contributes a structured adaptation of IUCN-derived criteria for cross-level policy-document analysis; its applicability in other legal and urban contexts requires comparative testing.