People often think of the city as antithetical to nature, but this view is changing. Biophilic design is becoming a common principle in urban environments, and in cities around the world, meeting urban residents’ needs for nature is now seen as a fundamental urban planning issue. Parks, green roofs, and street trees can only meet that need to some extent; nature experience is simply too limited in those kinds of spaces. So what will the city look like in a biophilic future? I offer this personal vision based on the reality I know: urban nature experience with birds, for which I have a special fondness, and the experience of hearing bird song.
Let’s take one more step back before we move ahead into this next section.
Section 1: Strolling Through a Biophilic City
There’s one street in Singapore I particularly love that, to me, perfectly captures the essence of a biophilic city. As I walk down it, I’m embraced by not just one but several trees whose heights and width make them feel like a truce vault. They allow the sunlight to dapple the ground below. The vines that cover the walls of the nearby buildings make me feel as if I am walking through a garden, bringing me closer to nature. The city hums with a gentle rhythm, traffic not buzz but a soft whoosh interrupted by the occasional bird call.
For a long time, Singapore has been a trailblazer in the biophilic approach to urban planning. The city-state is not just wildly admired for its wealth of parks and other green space; it has also been recognized by the World Economic Forum and others as a leader in biophilic urbanism integrated at scale. This is for both how and why it has done so: a very high-density environment that still embraces plants and animals, abounding in places that seem to nurture rather than punish. Singapore’s green approach to urban planning, much of which can be seen from the sky, is as much about appearance as it is about function—a wonderful model of aesthetics and ecology intertwined.
However, the city need not only be understood in terms of massive projects or high-profile urban plans. It is also made up of micro-interventions occurring in everyday spaces throughout the city. For instance, I remember resting in a small café where the ceiling was draped with plants. The walls of the café opened into a courtyard featuring a “living wall.” This pocket of greenery became a sanctuary in a bustling urban district. I can imagine far less impressive, less public interventions in private spaces, with nature somehow integrated, and making those spaces more conducive to life. And then, the idea of a biophilic city becomes even less about the city itself and more about the experiences of the people within it.
Copenhagen is another city that comes to mind when we think of urban biodiversity. This metropolis has taken a distinctive route in the pursuit of such an aim, creating dispersed ecological “hubs” that perform a rather interesting role in the urban landscape. These hubs are the local parks, which are not just places for recreation but serve as miniature ecosystems that make a meaningful contribution to local wildlife in the city, including birds and a variety of invertebrates like bees and other pollinators. There’s something about that payoff in terms of the local wildlife that helps make these parks more attractive than they otherwise might be.
Section 2: Designing for Well-Being and Biodiversity One of the most appealing aspects of biophilic cities is how they attend to the well-being of both people and other living things. From my own experience, I can attest that this dual focus can transform not just the physical landscape of a city but also the mental and emotional health of its inhabitants. There is something almost primal about our need for nature—what E.O. Wilson has called “biophilia,” the innate human drive to connect with other forms of life. I have witnessed this play out in many projects where the presence of elements like greenery, natural light, and water has had a transformative, almost magical, effect on people’s moods and behaviors.
Let us consider, as an instance, the High Line in New York City. I walked its length, captivated by the transformation of a once-abandoned rail line into a park. This park is very much alive, filled with plants, wildflowers, and an impressive variety of grasses—a testament to the park’s designer and its horticultural team. Indeed, the High Line seems to be flourishing as an urban oasis. But what a stretch: Can an old rail line be turned into a pedestrian-friendly public space and an ecological corridor? Past the people enjoying the park, I haven’t done a thorough headcount, but I bet there are as many animals (if not more) on the High Line as there are humans.
When it comes to biodiversity, biophilic cities prioritize native plants and local wildlife. Take Melbourne, for example. Its Urban Forest Strategy has significantly increased the number of tree species in the city and, as a result, has diversified its arbor. That’s a big win for the city’s fauna. But this strategy isn’t just about biodiversity; it’s also forward-looking. Not an insubstantial number of the tree species that have been or will be planted are heat- and drought-tolerant. Given that climate change is already dramatically impacting our world and will do so even more in the not too distant future, selecting tree species with a mind to the climate they’ll experience over the next several decades is a smart way to ensure that the tree canopy remains robust, resilient, and healthy.
One other city that resonates with me is Portland, Oregon, recognized for its infrastructure projects that lean green. The extensive network of green streets that the city has laid out is visually appealing, and it also functions extraordinarily well—if one can use that term for a street. The green streets of Portland manage stormwater runoff in an unfathomably efficient manner. They do this so well that the vegetated swales (bioswales, to use the proper term) built into the street design don’t even appear to be doing anything. That’s because, in a Portland street, nature is just a normal part of what makes the street work.
Hence, the sum total of what appears to me a very attractive street—a street that functions with nature instead of against it.
Biophilic design reflects a love of living systems. It is expressed most powerfully in projects like the one underway in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward—where work led by Brad Pitt has resulted in an impressive assemblage of architecturally striking homes that harvest nature’s energies to power and warm and cool them (and that, alas, are empty because the needed public investment has not materialized). Yet biophilic design can also be expressed in modest trails and tiny parks, as in Ithaca, New York, where paths lead around and over the Cornelia Converse Creek (which converses only with those who enter).
The paths do not inhabit Nature’s Temple (as the Great Smoky Mountains National Park really does) or a Moment of Nature (as a seeing-eye connection to a natural environment promises). But they do pretty well, given the limits of Ithaca’s topography and the City’s budget.
In my view, the secret to successful biophilic design lies in the ability to construct spaces that can adapt and respond to the requirements of the environment and the people within it. Biophilic design can make urban ecosystems that are anything but static. Parks, green roofs, and living walls can be features of biophilic cities that evolve and change over time. Biophilic design’s two main goals—supporting biodiversity and enhancing human well-being—fuels this apparent dynamism. Flexibility and responsiveness benefit both goals, and they do so for complementary reasons.
Certainly, there are hurdles to overcome when trying to create biophilic cities. One of the biggest is development pressure. There’s a tension, to put it mildly, between wanting to develop more housing and commercial space and wanting to maintain green or natural areas. This is especially true in many US cities, where land is scarce and the probably ancient desire to build something on a vacant lot is seldom held in check by park advocates. It’s so much easier to achieve even minor biophilic successes when there’s no one around advocating for a piece of property to be paved over!
I remember working on a project in a newly booming city that placed huge demands on land for housing. The first plans were for standard streets and lots, with minor elements of nature or even thought of nature—like signs that indicated a “path to nature” that wasn’t even visible—in the neighborhood. But after a lot of negotiation with the would-be community, we managed to reorient the project toward one that embraced nature. The alternative to a largely soil-less, plant-deficient, nature-void environment placed gardens—green roofs, vertical gardens, shared spaces filled with native plants—right at the front of the plan.
The result: a bumpin’ urban way of life that you could almost call “nature friendly.”
Biophilic cities can change even the most industrial places into lively, natural spaces. They can transform, say, the Monongahela River into a place where bald eagles find a home, and that’s just one story from Pittsburgh, a city painstakingly remaking itself after its history of steel and coal. The beauty of Pittsburgh’s biophilic transformation is in both the riverfronts and the wildlife that now have a home there. That story, maybe surprisingly, is emblematic of sedate, hilly, green Pittsburgh.
The biophilic city is an innovative place where technology and nature work in sync. This is especially true in the domain of urban planning—an area in which technological development is on the fast track. You might have heard of “smart cities.” They use sensors and other devices to collect and analyze all kinds of data. This will, I believe, allow urban planners to better “tune” their designs to ensure the sorts of benefits we’re hoping to get from biophilic infrastructure. Most of the benefits I look for fall under the broad umbrella of environmental performance—that is, how well biophilic infrastructure does what it should in an ecological sense.
Equally significant is community participation. time and again, I have seen that biophilic cities succeed most when the people who live in them assert an active role in caring for their environment. Whether in community gardens, volunteer tree-planting initiatives, or citizen science projects, the more people become involved in the aspects of creating and maintaining green (and blue) spaces, the more deeply connected they become to the sorts of places that biophilic cities are and to the natural world in general. And what more to the point is there than that sense of ownership? Whether or not one likes it, the person’s living in it is fundamental to the success of a “biophilic city.”
To sum up, the biophilic city is an urban setting that provides a focal point for environing nature, in which human beings and the natural world have a better chance of coexisting in harmony. This is a blueprint for the future, addressing the many challenges our species is facing today, such as climate change and increased urbanization. Affording this harmony is beneficial not just to our species—who are still under the influence of a twice-daily biochemical rhythm that has persisted for millennia—but also to myriad plant and animal species that form the incredible varieties of our planet’s nature.
Indeed, biophilic cities are nature-centric and therefore provide benefits that many city-dwellers have not even begun to imagine.
