At the very beginning of my career in urban planning, I viewed it through a very specific lens: a very modernist lens of concrete and glass where everything was really efficient. I remember standing in front of a newly built complex and admiring its awesome structure and sharp lines and thinking, This is totally future urbanism, what we really need. And then I had an epiphany: What was missing from our cities was not only a modernist superstructure but also a modernist naturalscape, something inspired by modernist biophilia. I honestly feel biophilic urbanism is the 21st-century antidote to the sterility and disconnection that many of our built environments embrace.
Biophilic urbanism is not merely concerned with introducing a modicum of greenery into contemporary cityscapes. It is concerned with a far deeper and more meaningful association with the nature world, one that, if fully realized, would present a truly enchanting vision of melding nature and artifice in a most dramatic urban setting. The term “biophilic” comes from the Greek word “philia,” which means love. In essence, it is the vision of descendants of the naturalist Walter B. Hill for a truly biophilic Birmingham.
The City’s Vanished Garden
I recollect a visit to Singapore, an undisputed leader in biophilic urbanism. The city is rightly and frequently called a “City in a Garden.” It has integrated parks, gardens, and even “green walls” into its architecture so successfully that these elements feel like part of the city’s very structure. And it’s not just about placing a few elements of nature here and there; it’s about the ecosystems. I once strolled through the “tree canopy” of “Gardens by the Bay,” where I was elevated enough that I could see the tops of the trees that were planted all around. The progression of my exact half-mile route made it feel as if I wandered through a coastal redwood forest. I experienced what I have come to think of as fully immersive nature—the kind of nature that is supposed to restore and refresh us, even in the density of urban life.
Reintroducing nature can happen even in the densest of urban spaces. While rooftop gardens aren’t exactly a revolutionary idea—they’ve been around since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans—what’s happening today with urban gardening is, in many ways, unprecedented. Buildings with gardens on their roofs may soon be as common as those with doormen and elevators. Urban farming as a community endeavor is productive in a number of ways. At its simplest, it’s a form of greening that gives us back green space; something we’re increasingly being deprived of in nature-starved, concrete-jungle life.
The link between human well-being and urban nature
I take great pride in having worked on the redesign of an ancient shopping center in a European city. Formerly, the area was a hustling, bustling thing of noise and stone that ended up feeling lifeless. After its redesign, it became a biophilic plaza. Water features line the walkways, and native plants provide cool shade and colors that vivify the space. The plaza is once again a gathering place. Kids play in the fountains, and families enjoy the shade and sounds of nature from the benches and sun. The plaza has become a kind of small oasis in the heart of a European city.
One of the main features of biophilic urbanism, which is evident in this transformation, is its effect on well-being. But again, it is not only biophilic urbanism that acts in this way; nearly all forms of effective urbanism do. Still, no Latin American country has yet grasped the opportunity that biophilic urbanism represents. Biophilia—love of life—informs the way that Cubans understand their relationship with nature, and the way that Ceballos, a noted biodiversity scientist and educator, approaches his work. For him, this is about much more than making urban spaces such as Havana better places to live.
Think about how closely physical fitness and the built environment are intertwined. The built environment can facilitate or inhibit basic levels of everyday fitness. Designing for nature in an urban setting—making it either visible or audible, or even bringing nature indoors—can promote walking and other forms of basic fitness. About 30% of all urban design projects in this world today are either led or inspired by Melbourne, a city in the vanguard of biophilic urbanism. Biophilic urbanism isn’t only about feeling good; it’s primarily about creating a healthier urban population that has reduced levels of morbidity and mortality associated with sedentary lifestyles.
Imagining the Skyline with Love of Nature
A different but equally impressive model is the Vertical Forest (Bosco Verticale) in Milan. These two residential towers feature upwards of 20,000 different plants, including trees, shrubs, and a wide variety of other flourishes. When I stood in front of them on a bright day, I didn’t just see greenery; I saw an organism. The plants wrapping around the towers are not only eye-catching but also serve many practical purposes—reducing noise (a frequent complaint of high-rise living), purifying the air, and helping to cool the immediate surroundings (an ongoing issue in the densely packed city). The Vertical Forest accomplishes all this while looking stunning and, most importantly, being alive at all times.
I pondered the idea of biophilic urbanism being a fundamental paradigm shift in how we think of the city, and I came up with this:
Cities traditionally grow outward, consuming incredible amounts of natural habitat. But biophilic urbanism allows us to think for the first time in millennia about a city that grows up, really living and thriving in its vertical structure.
That’s a whole lot of wall and roof surface area, really surface area of any kind. A biophilic Singapore has plenty of both and makes some of its tallest buildings into true biodiversity hotspots. Inside the beastly wooden structure of the Bosco Verticale, there lives in all that leaf surface, and up near all that roof surface, significant amounts of the biodiversity of Milan. That’s an urban biophilia that could save Milanese mammals, birds, and more.
The Difficulties and How to Overcome Them Establishing biophilic urbanism can be a hard sell. And there are good reasons that make it difficult. Foremost among them is cost. In the early planning stages, when paying close attention to significant details really matters, it’s all too easy for a developer to take a look at a budget and want to pinch pennies, especially when the budget already has a few dents from needed expense items. For any developer or investor, making biophilic features happen might feel like a stretch. But biophilic architecture pays dividends to property values and the kind of atmosphere where businesses thrive.
Portland, Oregon, offers a leading example of nature and urban life being combined harmoniously. Its “green streets” initiative is a case in point. Using plants to manage stormwater runoff, the program appears to provide benefits on a number of levels, well beyond the environmental safeguard it ensures. For one thing, it seems to save money. The city has found it’s cheaper to create these “green” street components than to build traditional drainage systems. And I must say—when I walked the streets of Portland last summer, I couldn’t tell where these “green” systems began and ended. I marveled at how stunningly beautiful and seamlessly functional they seemed, turning what well could have been a disaster for pedestrians and pollinators into a charming and safe walkway.
Moving biophilic urbanism forward requires that planners, architects, and landscape designers be educated about it and that they be incentivized to use it. The biophilic elements of urbanism are beyond the standard decrees of good architecture and good urban design. They are sustainable, and they are resilient. But mostly, they are human—they connect us to an existence that is more pleasurable, more meaningful, and by most measures, healthier. They are a profoundly good public policy. Indeed, in their pernicious absence, we are witnessing an injustice in public health and personal well-being.
Tomorrow’s Cities Will Be Verdant
To some, the hope of residing in an urban environment signifies a lifestyle writ large in concrete—a path replete with the splendor of thrilling chance and choice. For quite some time now, though, an alternative fantasy has been gaining ground, one in which nature is an essential urban ingredient: what I call the “nature-in-the-city” dream. It’s not enough to have the jungle taut with thrill; we also need its means of nature, its secret and visible gardens, to persist.
An utterly powerful experience for me was seeing a child playing in an urban park that I had a hand in designing. She was running, and laughing, and interacting with the park’s water feature, her shoes off, while her parents kept a vigilant eye on her from a shaded bench. That scene radiated joy and health. It also, I think, embodies one of the park’s fundamental principles: connectivity. There’s no question that the park, and the water feature in particular, facilitate various kinds of connection—for children and their parents, but also between those in the park and the wider urban environment.
Biophilic urbanism is currently not a trend but a shift in thinking about our possible futures. We have a great chance to rethink what urban environments might be—not lifeless, drab, toxic places but vibrant, nurturing human and ecological habitats. As I continue my work, I cling to that vision of what the future might hold, knowing that we can build something better in the next round of urbanization.
Section 2: In-depth Look at Biophilic Urbanism’s Impact and Future Prospects Biophilic urbanism, as a concept, feel like it emerged at the intersection of humanity’s—our—growing disconnect from the natural environment and the burgeoning recognition of the not-so-healthy tolls that living in cities takes on both our physical and mental well-being. No one would argue that at least some element of community exists in the urban centers in which we reside, but city after city has evolved (or devolved) into a “high-stress,” “fast-paced,” “everything and everyone all up in your face” kind of environment, defined far too often by pollution, noise, and sheer numbers. Urban life can feel like a power struggle—a contest between humankind and the forces of nature.
My time working on a project in Medellín, Colombia—one of the most well-documented urban transformations in recent history—comes to mind. Long afflicted by social and infrastructural problems, Medellín has undergone a transformation that involved far more than simply modernizing infrastructure or installing the latest technologies. What happened in Medellín is far more relevant to our times. It was about the integration of nature and the reconnection of neighborhoods through green corridors. Most striking was how the underutilized space that used to be a part of the Medellín river was turned into an inviting linear park—a safe place for Colonel F. to stop and take a picture. The Army precluded safe places along the river in our past.
The changes in Medellín were not merely a matter of looks or green improvements. As I strolled through the remodeled neighborhoods, I encountered residents who talked about the high-quality changes they had noticed in their lives. We felt crime rates had plummeted. We were spending more time outdoors, and we felt this crazy sense of unsought surge in the community ownership we had within our respective hoods. A lady I talked to said she now utilized a once desolate pathway that led to her job, which had been turned into a tree-lined, flower-lined green space. “I used to feel unsafe here. Now I greet neighbors along the way. It has made me a part of this city in a way I hadn’t felt before,” she shared.
The change also had a noteworthy economic impact. After the area’s transformation, real estate prices soared, and we began to see new small businesses in the public spaces serving the hundreds of thousands of people who now inhabit the paths, parks, and plazas. You could say economically it’s a home run. But even more, “Medellín is proof that biophilic design doesn’t just improve the environment; it has an impact on public safety, economic viability, and social equity.”
Cultural Inclusion in Biophilic Design Cultures around the world have their own interpretations of “nature”. Traditionally, most design movements in the West have elevated a singular version of “nature” to some universal ideal that they impose on different places and cultures without regard for their unique histories and needs. Biophilic design can become a sort of modernist bulldozer if it musters such prescriptive power. In contrast, my work in Kyoto has taught me that biophilic design need not be prescriptive; it can be responsive to the particular version of “nature” in each community and serve as a bridge to connect those communities with the distinct cultural elements embedded in each place.
The changes in season are intricately woven into the life of Kyoto. The celebration of the cherry blossom in spring, the contemplation of maple leaves in autumn—these are the slow rhythms of that community. When we were working on a residential project there, we made sure that the essence of seasonal observation was reflected in the choice of plants—a deeply biophilic choice that makes the appearance and the reality of the residential project staggeringly beautiful and aesthetically coherent across all four seasons. We drew from the rich tradition of Japanese gardens; their plant choices and arrangements serve the garden as a slow-moving piece of community art that is coherent across all four seasons.
We built a core garden around an old pond. A stone path winds through the space, which is filled with carefully chosen trees and shrubs that keep it quiet and serene. This pretty, private little spot in the busy city has become a gathering place—a central point in the neighborhood. I often visit and experience its transformations with the seasons and the people who come to it. I will describe three of the experiences I have had in the garden with the coming of different seasons: the cherry blossom season, full-blown winter, and the tranquil period that spans the time from late autumn to the first snows of winter.
Making a Case for Growing Our Cities: From Food to Space and Place Urban agriculture might be one of the most exhilarating parts of biophilic urbanism gaining populism—if not momentum—over the last decade. It too encompasses a great green challenge: how to expand green spaces in our increasingly dense urban centers. But it takes one step further. It combines the aspiration for more green space in the city with the real-life urban problem of food insecurity and empowers citizens to grow food in their immediate environments. My recent travels in Havana, Cuba, led me to study the local organopónicos—urban organic farms transforming the city’s vacant lots into productive green spaces.
There are two aspects to the beauty of the organopónicos that I find particularly striking. The first is that these urban agriculture spaces offer a source of fresh food for city dwellers. The second is that they serve as a kind of bridge between our modern moment and a more traditional, less-mediated way of interacting with food. Watching people (including children) plant, tend, and harvest crops in the middle of an otherwise sprawling urban landscape is a heartening sight indeed.
In my experience, when urban agriculture is integrated into the city, it prompts a certain sustainability that is very direct. Kids learn about food. Not long ago, I spoke with a young boy who was showing off tomatoes he grew in a community garden. He had learned to make the soil ready, keep the plants watered, and tend to them so they would thrive. “I like these more than the ones from the store,” he said. I asked him why, and he replied, “Because I helped them grow.” This reveals the kind of connection to food that is reestablished in very small and incredibly impactful ways through biophilic urbanism.
The Interplay Between Climate Resilience and Biophilia One of the most persuasive arguments for the adoption of biophilic urbanism is its potential to greatly increase urban climate resilience. Even as urban centers are ground zero for so many of the climate crisis’s “best” (or worst) effects—intensified heat, amplified storms, compromised air quality—they’re also most in need of better solutions. And biophilic design is nothing if not a better urban solution.
I worked on a project in the city of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, where we created a sequence of spaces called “water plazas.” These plazas serve a dual function: During heavy rains, they collect and hold a huge volume of water—instead of letting it go rushing downhill into the already overburdened storm-sewer system. And when it’s not raining—like when the sun is shining, as it is today—these spaces can be used by the public as parks. I sauntered around one of them in the afternoon heat, eluding the giant robotic vacuum cleaner that was being used to maintain the space.
I returned to the work site two years after my team and I had completed the project. The area had undergone a stunning metamorphosis: the former desolate parking lot had become an “oasis,” as one recent visitor described it, teeming with trees, birdsong, and the sight of children running between the trunks. And the neighborhood itself is now markedly cooler: Thermometers placed in the area show that it is consistently 10 to 15 degrees since higher than in nearby parts of the formerly barren asphalt desert. The whole affair was a clear demonstration of biophilic design in action.
Reintroducing Water into the City
Biophilic urbanism recognizes water as a vital element in its design philosophy. Biophilia, often termed the love of life or living systems, is a guiding principle in the development of buildings and landscapes that are markedly more biodiverse and resilient. Ecologist Edward O. Wilson (born 1929) first coined the term biophilia in the 1980s. Science has shown that a biophilic environment has profound benefits for human physical and mental health. Biophilia acts as an antidote to the stress that modern urban life can impose. Integrating water into cities’ designs helps loosen the death grip of urbanization on the lives of city dwellers.
An example of a water feature that is both beautiful and functional is the meandering river in Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park, in Singapore. Once a concrete stormwater canal, the area was transformed into a channeling river with lush, sloping banks. The river is no longer a simple form with a single function; it is a multipurpose assembly that proves the worth of water and biophilic design principles. The river is also a place for community interaction. Because of its shape, it allows the people who live nearby to gather at the banks or find tranquility in the fishing holes one can find along the river. What makes it even better is the accessibility the river features for local flora and fauna; the growth of said flora allows the nearby Igloos—what are essentially sound barriers—to perform double duty: not only are they good for the local wildlife, but they’re also a kindness to the people who live nearby.
These initiatives concern more than the construction of a park; they traffic in the delicate interplay of natural processes and urban living. What if every city could convert its neglected or overstressed infrastructure into green, blue corridors like the one in Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park? We would not only be ameliorating our infrastructure’s vulnerability to climate change but also making our city’s more vibrant and enjoyable places to live.
At the core of biophilic urbanism is a profound engagement with communities.
An essential element of biophilic urbanism is community involvement. Even the most impressive planners and architects can create only spectacular spaces if those spaces are truly and heartily occupied by the community. A biophilic design, at its best, imagines a reconciliation—at the level of people, flora, and fauna—of communities with the spaces in which they live.
I collaborated with a grassroots community group in Cape Town, South Africa, that turned an abandoned railway line in their midst into a community garden and public green space. The space began modestly—an assemble of raised beds tended to by a handful of residents and volunteers. But it has since metastasized, with trees planted here and there and pathways built to connect disparate parts of the neighborhood. One morning, I recall one of our chats with a resident. The woman, who has lived her whole life in the neighborhood that the railway once bisected, told me the project had given her a new raison d’être. Though she is not elderly, she kinda acts like it in the way she hugs our community garden and the project’s vision close to her heart. With a warm smile, she said, “It’s like we’ve been given a little piece of paradise right here in the city.”
These efforts ensure that biophilic spaces become an essential aspect of the community and something that the community values and protects. They create an opportunity for a neighborly bond and a sense of shared ownership and pride. Biophilic projects can be part of the community, but only with engagement from the community can they become an infrastructure that serves and is served by the community adventurers.
Bringing together technology and nature to create intelligent, biophilic urban environments.
Venturing further into an era dominated by intelligent technology, we hold the strong promise of melding our revelation biophilic urbanism with smart technology to construct what we believe could be the world’s first “smart, green city.” Sensors in our urban forests will keep track of all manner of things and will be able to tell our residents when the time is right to engage with nature and when not to in as precise a manner as we can imagine. Green roofs will have optimized auto-irrigation elements that fit themselves to the kinds of weather we’re having and the kinds of plants we’ve got on top of our various buildings. Community parks will have “smart” systems that auto-detect which plant species in those parks are in need of water and which are not.
Incorporating technology into our urban biomes doesn’t detract from biophilia or from how well our nature-based solutions work. Quite the contrary: using tech makes them more resilient and efficient. It comes down not to a preference for biophilic design or for technology but to making use of tech—where appropriate—to give our nature-based nanobiosystems the best chance of growing into a biophilic urbanism that serves human and environmental health.
Turning Our Vision into Reality: Constructing the Deserving Cities of Our Future
Biophilic urbanism seeks to create cities that reflect our fundamental affection for the natural world. It’s about crafting the kinds of environments where people feel good—where they sense greater happiness, improved health, and a more profound connection to the places they inhabit, the communities they serve, and the nature that surrounds them. There’s no singular way to achieve biophilic outcomes; it’s an adaptable framework that works across diverse settings. If you think your city is too far gone to reclaim much nature, look at these case studies and think again.
Biophilic design, which draws upon the natural world to create built environments that nurture the well-being of their human inhabitants, is something that every urban planner, architect, and policy expert in this country should know about. And these people should not just know about it in theory; they should embrace it and apply it in a way that invests in not just the appearance of well-being for urban residents but also the actual well-being that emerges in part from the appearance.
One of the most hopeful facets of biophilic urbanism is its integration of green infrastructure with climate resilience. Rain gardens, green roofs, and urban wetlands are all stormwater management systems that help us live with the increasing rain and heavy downpours that are a part of climate change. On the day I visited a green roof at the City of Chicago’s Weather Office on the start of a lovely summer weekend, the building beneath it was still too hot, thanks to urban heat island effects—even though the temperature at that time was about 77°F. The argument for green roofs relies, in part, on how they can help reduce the amount of heat that buildings generate.
The aspiration for what is to come: A global entitlement to verdant public areas.
For years, I’ve learned that biophilic urbanism is not just a benefit for the wealthy, nor is it something that can only be done in resource-rich cities. Biophilia can and should be applied in all places; from incredibly wealthy districts to all-too-common pockets of urban poverty. For me, biophilic design also picks a side: it envisions access to nature as a universal right, one that everyone can and should have.
I have participated in initiatives where inexpensive interventions have produced remarkable results, profoundly impacting people’s lives. One of these initiatives was converting a seriously neglected alleyway into a wonderful community space that is alive with plants and the sounds and sights of nature, despite being in the middle of Denver. Interventions like this require neither high technology nor large funding and can be done in meaningful ways that don’t allow the words “cheap and easy” to become derogatory; instead, they embody a commitment to valuing those spaces where people and nature can coexist in a meaningful way.
When I contemplate the future of biophilic urbanism, I am filled with hope. The cities that adopt this approach are demonstrating that it is both achievable and vitally important to create a profound expression of living within a nature-honoring built environment. Even a casual look at their plans and projects shows how much these works are motivated by desires to be good neighbors to the local flora and fauna, good friends to the biodiversity of their places, good parents, in a sense, to the next generations of living things. It is simply not enough, even by the diminished standards of urbanism that have prevailed for so long, to build cities that sequester us, insulate us, and provide us with the comforts of an interior existence.
The Practical Steps toward Urban Biophilia: Strategies, Illustrations, and the Way Forward
Taking biophilic urbanism from theory to practice is a significant challenge for many municipalities and urban developers today. It is easy to say integrating natural elements into urban spaces has inestimable value, that it’s a no-brainer, a path paved with good intentions. Yet, translating the theory into actual practice is a monumental ask. Why, you might well wonder, should we make the effort to realize this transformative potential? Well, the payoff is not only good for individual citizens in terms of health and well-being but also on a much larger scale—increasing biodiversity, improving climate resilience, and more.
A Layered Method for Making Buildings Eco-friendly from the Bottom Up
Transforming urban centers biophilically can start right at the individual-building scale. One of the strategies that can unfurl across urban centers and have a profound effect on place quality is the use of layered greenery—think living walls, roof gardens, interior landscaping. But using layered greenery in urban architecture isn’t a simple prescription. Yet, the question remains: How can we make it work?
Consider the idea of vertical gardens or living walls. When I visited the Musée du Quai Branly, in Paris, I saw an extraordinary nearly 8000-square-foot wall that is a living garden and teems with more than 15,000 plants. Those plants are not just there to look good but to improve the local air quality. The wall garden and the nearly 8000-square-foot living garden are not just there to provide insulation benefits for the building; they also play a part in pollinator restoration in a dense urban environment. With the vertical surfaces of the wall garden and the wall behind it now not quite dead, these spaces have been turned into living ecosystems.
During my visit to Toronto, Canada, I took part in a smaller program that was all about the integration of green roofs into public housing units. Some of the chronic poor who lived in the units had their doubts. Apparently, rooftop gardens and the like are all the rage, but how were they going to change the lives of those living at rock bottom? But as time went by and the kind of plants that apparently love Canada thrived, even the skeptics began to see the value of it all. Meanwhile, I was told the green roofs would insulate much better in the winter (an infamous Canadian winter, at that) than the roofs found on any other public housing unit. Energy costs were going to drop.
The city forest and the potential of indigenous flora.
A vital aspect of biophilic urbanism is the creation of urban forests and the rewilding of city neighborhoods. When we plant trees in urban areas, we are doing much more than simply adding a decorative feature; we are reintroducing a complex living system. Ecological and evolutionary biologists Aaron Ellis and Michael L. Rosenzweig argue that we have “clearly entered a new epoch in Earth’s history” and that “the ways in which we manifest our evolutionary imagination will determine the welfare of places—both here and everywhere else.”
I remember working in Los Angeles on a project to turn a decrepit parking structure into an urban wilderness. I can picture the space—the very fine concrete that had once been practical, but now looked drab compared with what lay just beyond, a Los Angeles in full essence, framed by fluctuating mountain ranges. And into this space we were proposing to put not just a few trees, but hundreds of them, together with unfathomably large amounts of soil, deep and shallow, full of over 40 species of native plants—wild blueberry, coast live oak, sage, and others unimaginable without a trip to the concrete jungle of a liquidator.
From a rooftop garden, I look over a city that has adopted biophilic principles, and I catch a glimpse of what my urban future could be. My kids could be living in it. It’s a place where they would help their mother, the “community gardener,” tend to a garden in our biophilic home. It’s a city where, “far tree, urban forest; close tree, street tree,” and “if you see water, walk to the sound of its murmuring.” Biophilic urbanism listens and attends, as these life-affirming projects express the promise of a much more sustainable urban life.
