What model for a truly vibrant city?

Raphaël Besson, June 2020

The Conversation

Although living organisms are not a new feature of urban and architectural design, they take on a whole new dimension in the Anthropocene era. Cities, which occupy 20% of the Earth’s land area and are home to more than half of the world’s population, have a decisive role to play in the conservation and reproduction of life.

A chronology of living cities

In the 19th century, the models developed by urban planners were largely influenced by the concept of living beings. Progressive models drew inspiration from the human body and its functions to organise and divide up the city, which was conceived as a superimposition of green lungs, cells to live in, machines to work in and various flows directly inspired by the circulation of blood.

In response to this anthropomorphic and functionalist model of the city, proponents of the culturalist model – such as William Morris and Ebenezer Howard – defended the idea of an organic city, more inspired by nature. This vision was taken further by architects such as Antoni Gaudí, Otto Frei and, more recently, Luc Schuiten, who were masters in the field of bio-inspiration.

The current period of transition is prompting many architects and urban planners to move beyond a passive, metaphorical and mimetic interpretation of living things. The challenge is not to slavishly copy human or natural forms, but to activate and work with living things to design, govern and build the cities of tomorrow.

This urban fabric of living things is structured according to two main approaches, depending on whether the living beings are human or non-human.

Smart cities, collaborative cities

The first approach is that of the Smart City. In this model, the aim is to take the pulse of the city in order to collect, analyse and make the most of the information and data produced by human activity. This capture of life, achieved through the deployment of large-scale sensors, is intended to optimise the management and functioning of cities.

The other model is that of the collaborative city. It seeks to create a framework conducive to the flourishing of social and human activity, with a view to a more resilient and open approach to city management. With this in mind, the collaborative city develops spaces to boost urban vitality through the creation of ‘third places’, co-production spaces, Urban Labs, Living Labs and temporary and transitional spaces; ‘unfinished’ places that can be adapted to a variety of social situations.

While the Smart City and collaborative city models differ in many ways, they share the same desire to mobilise all human energies to ensure the management and functioning of cities.

The regenerative city

A second approach consists of activating non-human life in the fabric of cities.

Numerous studies are attempting to conceptualise this new approach through the concepts of urban metabolism, urban ecology, circular urban planning, urban biodiversity, urban bioregions and territorial biomimicry.

These studies converge in a reflection that consists of moving from a logic of predation of nature to a logic of care and repair of living things. In this context, various studies propose activating natural ecosystems in the fabric of cities, while drawing inspiration from the major principles of living things.

The vision is that of a regenerative city: capable of producing biodiversity, energy and food, recycling waste, storing carbon and purifying air and water. A city capable of becoming a privileged medium for reinventing symbiotic relationships between living beings.

Reinventing a symbiotic relationship

In order to establish urban planning that is adapted to the Anthropocene era and reinvent a symbiotic relationship with living beings, three theoretical shifts seem necessary.

To conceive and project themselves, cities have often drawn inspiration from human functions: the engineer in the smart city, the artist and the creative in the creative city, the craftsman and the maker in the collaborative city.

The perspective of living cities involves moving beyond this human-centred prism, and in particular the ethnocentric logic of sustainable development, which places economic, social and ecological considerations on the same level. In line with ecosophy and biomimicry, it seems essential to reposition human organisations as intrinsic components of the Earth system.

This shift from an anthropocentric approach to a bio-inspired approach has several consequences for the design of tomorrow’s cities.

First and foremost, we must stop viewing city dwellers as aliens at the top of the ecosphere and place them back at the heart of nature. To achieve this, processes to reintegrate nature into cities are not enough. It is much more a question of building cities through nature and with living organisms, in order to create bio-architectures and biomaterials from biological organisms, to create bioluminescent infrastructures from living organisms, and to develop architectures based on the principles of self-generating matter.

Architecture that can filter the air, develop biodiversity and evolve according to uses and timeframes. And, ultimately, to create cities designed as natural ecosystems and inspired by the fundamental principles of life.

Re-embedding ecosystems

In the 19th and 20th centuries, architects, urban planners, researchers, engineers and economists specialising in cities invented themselves as autonomous professionals. They gradually separated themselves from social and natural ecosystems to found a discipline that was closed to other forms of knowledge: the knowledge of residents, experiential knowledge, know-how and knowledge built up over nearly 4 billion years and derived from observing life on Earth.

This process of ‘disembedding’ and separation of knowledge about cities has led to urban planning that is disconnected from living organisms and the Earth system. The consequences include biodiversity loss, rampant consumption of natural resources, degradation of the living environment, greenhouse gas emissions, destruction of social ties and communities, and privatisation of the commons.

There is therefore a major challenge to re-embed urban ecosystems in social and natural ecosystems. There are many possibilities for re-embedding: architecture in the Earth, the economy, research and technology in society, the city in nature, art in everyday life, etc.

Organising the city through ‘third parties’

A living city is a city whose functioning is similar to ecological processes. To achieve this, it must necessarily break free from a vertical and functionalist model of government.

It must be designed as an ecosystem capable of diversifying uses, hybridising single-function entities, connecting diverse populations, promoting exchanges and cooperation between a multitude of environments and living beings, and also breaking down barriers between forms of production, whether social, ecological, economic or technical.

In this ecosystemic model, the third space becomes the new strategic location for the organisation of the city. This third or intermediate space can take many forms: interstices, edges, ecotones, ecological transition zones, third places, vacant spaces and other interface zones with ‘biological thickness’.

Examples include the ‘gardens in motion’ imagined by Gilles Clément, the Belle de Mai brownfield site in Marseille, and transitional urban spaces such as Les Grands Voisins and La Cité Fertile in Pantin. Other examples include the third places of Fab City and the citizen laboratories in Madrid, which offer an alternative approach to urban planning through co-production and self-management.

However, a third space cannot be sufficient on its own to govern a living city. It must be backed by a third party capable of mediating between a diversity of sectoral policies, cultures, knowledge, territories and living systems.

This third party can take the form of collectives of architects and urban planners, such as the ETC collective, Cabanon Vertical, Basurama or Todo por La Praxis.

It can also take the form of the ‘geo-artists’ described by Luc Gwiazdzinski or the new players in urban development, such as Plateau urbain, Paisaje transversal and the Agence nationale de psychanalyse urbaine.

All of these third-party actors have the capacity to facilitate dialogue between project managers, project owners and end users, and to bridge the gap between architecture and urban planning on the one hand, and civil society and natural ecosystems on the other.

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