OPINION article Front. Sustain. Cities Sec. Urban Greening Synergies and trade-offs of nature-inclusive architecture in dense cities: between human health and urban biodiversity - WZWeijie Zhong - XLXiangning Li - Tongji University, Shanghai, China Select one of your emails You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers: Notify me on publication Please enter your email address: If you already have an account, please login You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here Abstract As global urbanization intensifies, high-density cities increasingly embrace vertical development to accommodate population growth while limiting urban sprawl. Yet verticalization often comes at the expense of direct access to natural environments, leading to reduced opportunities for human-nature interaction and declining urban biodiversity. Biophilic design frames architecture as an interface for integrating natural elements, processes, and experiences into the built environment, with a primary concern for human health and well-being (Kellert, 2008;Zhong et al., 2022). It differs from green architecture, which is often evaluated through energy, material, and life-cycle environmental performance (Ragheb et al., 2016). Nature-inclusive cities focus more broadly on incorporating biodiversity goals into urban development, district planning, green-blue infrastructure, and real estate projects (Mattijssen et al., 2023;Monti, 2019). Since urban residents spend nearly 90% of their time indoors (Ma et al., 2024), buildings become critical spaces for reconfiguring human-nature relationships. Building-integrated green spaces can also serve as vertically distributed ecological nodes, supplementing limited ground-level greenery and providing habitats for urban flora and fauna. This article therefore explores nature-inclusive architecture, which integrates living organisms, habitat conditions, and ecological processes into buildings to promote human health and urban biodiversity.In dense cities, nature-inclusive architecture is often materialized through three-dimensional green spaces (e.g., sky terraces, green balconies, and vertical gardens), representing a shift from horizontal greening to volumetric and vertically distributed ecological systems (Zhong et al., 2026). However,