The city of the future looks to nature

In our increasingly climate conscious world, many cities are embracing nature, with more tree cover and open spaces such as parks, and restored wetlands, ponds, rivers and other waterways. The benefits are well-documented: access to nature has been linked to improved mental wellbeing, better physical health and an enhanced quality of life while biodiversity in natural ecosystems gets a much-needed boost

Yet creating truly livable and sustainable cities requires more than simply adding greenery or waterbodies in a fragmented manner. To work with nature effectively, cities first need to understand it and apply those lessons across the urban environment in harmony with nature's cycles. Just as natural ecosystems depend on the continuous exchange of information, future cities will depend on their ability to observe, measure and respond to environmental conditions in real time.

Nature as a model Nature has evolved highly resilient and efficient systems over billions of years. It works as a system of ecosystems and nothing works in isolation. Water, plants, animals, insects, invertebrates, microbes all work in an interconnected system that is continuously exchanging and responding to information. When one part is affected or damaged the whole ecosystem is affected.

Urban systems, by contrast, such as that which we see in many cities, have often been designed in silos. Transport, energy, buildings and water systems are frequently planned separately, even though the resources they consume and their impacts on the environment are closely connected with natural ecosystems.

There is a growing understanding that nature has a lot to offer us when it comes to adapting to climate change challenges and thus a trend towards investing in green and blue initiatives. Paris, for example, has created a network of cool islands' featuring water and vegetation to provide relief during heatwaves, while Rotterdam is planning to plant vegetation on over 900,000 square metres of rooftops to help manage rainwater, reduce flood risks and lower urban temperatures. London has strategically introduced beavers to build natural defenses against flooding. Such initiatives demonstrate the growing recognition that embedding natural ecosystems within urban systems can play an important role in making cities healthier and more resilient to climate shifts.

Yet while these projects show the value of working with nature, they are piecemeal and replicate the siloed approach. They don't necessarily come from an understanding of which interventions will have the greatest impact and how different parts of an urban ecosystem influence one another.

Continuous learning from nature As urban areas grow and climate pressures intensify, planners are increasingly looking beyond local initiatives and studying natures interconnected approach as a model for creating more resilient cities. The premise is that nature works because it is constantly sensing, responding and adapting. For the cities of the future to be both efficient and sustainable, they must do the same.

With technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), AI and digital twins, that is now becoming more achievable. These tools enable us to learn enormously about monitoring, calibrating and optimizing our own ecosystems in cities and regions and build resilience.

Many cities already do this to some extent, using networks of sensors to measure air pollution, water quality, traffic flow, temperature and energy use. Satellites in space and remote sensing technologies enable us to monitor water flows and scarcity, vegetation health and even plastic pollution hotspots. They also enable us to study entire ecosystems, track changes over time and make decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions.

Beyond monitoring to forecasting This data is invaluable, because even small interventions often involve significant investment and knowing which tactic to take can be complex. Using the right data with digital twins and modelling, however, enables city planners to test ideas and model solutions to understand realistic outcomes before any physical work is done.

When used with AI, digital twins can also help us speed up the development of models that mimic weather patterns, forecast flood hazards and their resulting risks or test different tree-planting strategies. They can even assess future water demand or estimate water allocation to balance competing requirements between cities and agriculture, for instance.

Some cities are already embracing it and reaping enormous benefits. Singapores Virtual Singapore digital twin, for example, enables planners and researchers to model environmental conditions, test sustainability initiatives and better understand how different parts of the urban system interact. Munich, similarly, uses digital twins to model planning and development scenarios and inform policies and decisions.

By bringing together data on infrastructure, population and environmental factors, digital twins cities make evidence-based decisions about resilience and resource management.

But cities like these remain minorities. More cities need to embrace digital technology as a way of better understanding complex natural ecosystems so they can work to restore them. We need to get closer to nature if we are to reach net-zero targets and build a more sustainable world.

But there are barriers. Cities lack clear performance guidelines on how to use such technology for ecological purposes, amid rising concerns about the environmental impact of using such tools.

All about trust It all starts with reliable and comparable data. Cities depend on information collected from a growing network of sensors, platforms and organizations. If those systems cannot communicate or the data cannot be trusted, even the most sophisticated digital twin will have limited value.

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