Operationalizing cultural ecosystem services in urban green planning: a systematic review

Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) capture the non-material benefits that people derive from their interactions with nature, encompassing values such as recreation, aesthetic experience, identity, and wellbeing. Despite increasing recognition in policy and research, CES remain challenging to operationalize in urban green planning, constrained by methodological fragmentation and conceptual ambiguity within the broader ecosystem services framework. Addressing this gap is critical for advancing nature-based urban green planning that connects ecological performance with lived experience. This systematic review synthesizes 26 peer-reviewed studies published between 2012 and 2025, selected through PRISMA protocols. Studies were examined by CES dimensions, urban green space typologies, methodological approaches, and enabling mechanisms that link CES to wellbeing outcomes. Mechanisms were interpreted as pathways that explain how people experience nature in increasingly dense urban contexts. Findings reveal that CES evaluation remains largely conceptual, with limited integration of perceptual and ecological data. Recreational and aesthetical service evaluations dominate the evidence base but are often treated as a generic service rather than a nature-based activity. Most studies operate at either site-specific, regional, or municipal scales, with few bridging experiential and spatial data to inform design or policy. However, emerging neighborhood-scale and cross-scalar approaches demonstrate growing efforts to link micro-level experiential processes with broader ecological and governance frameworks. Mechanisms such as walking, relaxation, and social interaction were most frequently associated with psychological restoration and social cohesion, whereas learning- and stewardship-related activities, though fewer in number, showed the strong connections to identity formation and capability enhancement. The review demonstrates how methodological approaches are beginning to shape more integrated CES perspectives, while also revealing overlooked experiential and relational dimensions that could strengthen urban green planning practice. It argues that operationalizing CES requires planning frameworks that integrate the experiential and relational dimensions of human-nature interactions into decision-making to strengthen the ecological, experiential, and social dimensions that underpin sustainable urban environments.