For decades urban renewal projects featuring biodiversity conservation have been held up as best practice around the world. There is an ongoing desire amongst design practitioners and end-users for outcomes that foster biodiversity. However, such outcomes continue to be limited to ad hoc initiatives by individual champions rather than being standard practice. Designers are increasingly asked to integrate nature and biodiversity considerations within design, but what does this mean? We explore the variety of roles for biodiversity that have been assumed in urban development processes over the last two decades, through a systematic review of academic literature. We found that biodiversity was given ‘passive’, through to ‘incidental’ and ‘active’ roles, traditional development practice focuses largely on passive approaches. Discussing the implications of the conscious or unconscious role ‘assigned’ to biodiversity, we contend that giving biodiversity an ‘active’ role within design is essential for enabling biodiversity inclusive cities. We propose that acknowledging the ‘non-human’ stakeholder role of biodiversity is a critical first step towards proactive choices that enable ‘biodiversity inclusive design’. This will enable designers to expand user-centred design for a more nuanced understanding of both human and non-human needs. We present an emergent ‘participatory ladder for non-humans’, which encourages designers to elevate biodiversity to having an active stakeholder role, leading towards biodiversity inclusive design practice.