The number of intensively used urban and coastal areas will increase rapidly during the coming decades. At the same time these areas can be important for biodiversity conservation, as is shown in the U.S. and Europe. New approaches are needed that facilitate or allow for human use, but also allow for the indigenous biota to flourish. In this special session we will confront approaches and experiences from several countries and regions regarding this issue. Our main questions are: 1) How can we understand these systems? Can we look at them in the same way as to so-called pristine or semi-natural systems? Do we need a special kind of restoration ecology to really deal with these urban and coastal systems? Are these degraded ecosystems, mosaics of ecosystems, dynamic systems, or not ecosystems at all? Is Rozenzweig’s term reconciliation ecology useful, in addition to restoration and reservation ecology? And more concrete, how do we investigate these systems? Obviously a kind of sustainability science is needed, that means a rich mix of professionalisms and disciplines. Others have proposed to develop a so-called transdisciplinary post-normal ecological science for human-related systems, including scientific knowledge but also other kinds of knowledge, values, and interests somehow. 2. What are appropriate management strategies? Will a more transdisciplinary and sustainability science lead to a more appropriate and sustainable way of management? How can we assure the involvement of stakeholders and NGO’s, and to what extent is this needed? Is it possible to develop a mix of different strategies with a certain zoning of the areas? In this session we will focus on some urban and coastal areas from several parts of the world.