Increasing urbanization, concretization, and reducing urban green space (UGS) are seen as leading causes for significantly warmer cities (IPCC 2022). There is a growing realization that solutions based on natural processes and ecosystems can help to tackle the pressing challenge of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. However, in the context of India, there are significantly fewer studies focused on the application of nature-based solutions (NbSs) for the mitigation of UHI in spatial planning. The present study was undertaken for Nagpur, a city in the drought-prone Vidarbha region in Maharashtra, a western state of India. The city lies in the Tropical Savanna climate (Aw) characterized by extremely hot summers. The study was undertaken at two spatial scales. The city-level assessment involved spatiotemporal analysis, and of a detailed scale of urban blue-green spaces through spatial temperature measurements with a handheld temperature measuring device. The major findings of the study suggest that there has been a drastic reduction in Nagpur’s green cover in the selected time period and areas with higher temperatures are concentrated in the old city area with higher built density and in areas with bare lands. Areas with blue-green spaces exhibited lower temperatures compared to the surrounding areas. In addition, the result showed that the size, shape of a UGS and canopy cover within the UGS play a very important role in lowering the ambient temperature. Similarly, the size of the waterbody emerged as a significant influencing factor for mitigating heat in the area. The understanding from the study could play a critical role in the informed siting of urban green and blue spaces particularly in the climatic regime of the study area.