Urban green infrastructure for resilience: pathways, trade-offs and implementation conditions

Urban green infrastructure (GI) is increasingly used to address climate, environmental and social pressures in cities, but evidence of its contribution to resilience remains fragmented across intervention types, spatial scales and implementation contexts. This review synthesizes evidence on how urban GI contributes to resilience through identifiable pathways and under what conditions these pathways produce durable outcomes. An integrative review of Scopus and Web of Science, supplemented by backward and forward citation tracking, was conducted using a pathway-based extraction and thematic synthesis of GI interventions, ecological and physical mechanisms, ecosystem services and disservices, hazard or stressor responses, resilience outcomes, trade-offs and implementation conditions. The synthesis shows that GI contributes to resilience through context-dependent pathways linking interventions to hydrological regulation, thermal moderation, habitat connectivity, environmental regulation, recreation, health and food provision. However, ecosystem-service benefits should not automatically be interpreted as demonstrated resilience outcomes. Performance depends on spatial configuration, connectivity, environmental conditions, urban morphology, management, governance, financing, maintenance and the distribution of benefits and costs. Multifunctionality can create synergies but also trade-offs, including land and water competition, ventilation effects, maintenance burdens and inequitable access or displacement pressures. The review proposes an integrated framework that connects GI interventions to mechanisms, services and disservices, hazard responses and resilience outcomes, with place, scale, time and implementation conditions acting as cross-cutting determinants. This pathway-based perspective supports more targeted and equitable urban greening decisions.