Everything is interdependent in the world; there are no things and facts that wouldn’t be connected directly or between each other. There are no pathless barriers between wild and inorganic nature, there are the laws combining the entire world in unified whole and giving rise to the objective possibility of usage in the artificially created systems of laws and principles of building of nature and its forms. Its basis is a biological relationship of a man and nature.
Managing urban growth has become one of the most important challenges of the 21st century. As a result of the uncontrolled and unplanned sprawling of the cities, the rapid process causes a lot of different ecological, economic, social and infrastructural problems and risks. Many forces will contribute to sudden changes and surprise in the 21st Century. Forces that will affect the city including the increasing pace of technological change, the interdependency of the global economy, and increasing ecological stresses associated with an increasing world population and migration.
At the core of the challenge we face is the inevitable uncertainty of dynamic combination human-natural systems. Rapid modifications of biophysical systems have the potential to trigger regime shifts —abrupt and irreversible changes—that will have significant consequences. It is clear that the likelihood of regime shifts is higher in ecosystems where humans have reduced resilience by modifying biogeochemical cycles, altering hydrological regimes, reducing biodiversity, and changing the magnitude, frequency, and duration of disturbance regimes.
As the fastness of modern life in cities creates the definite standards for vital space, one of the most important criteria of urban quality is its functionality and the ability to anticipate and prepare for changes and potential threats. Never before have so many people been exposed to such a hyper scale of impending ecologic, social-cultural and resources dilemmas.
It all comes down to resilience. Whereas natural ecosystems adapt to comfortably accommodate the ecological changes brought about by the planet’s essential operating mechanisms, our social-technical systems are, on the whole, created either on the assumption that such events will not occur or that when they do we can divert the impacts.
The concept of an urban and architectural design –respecting biophysical boundaries-, social and an economic renaissance and disruptive technologies engaged in symbiotic relationships reconceptualised as interconnected urban ecosystems. The convergence of ecology, design and resilience thinking is certainly a notable change in urban transition pathways.
More agile infrastructure and design
for cities by creating modular, small-scale infrastructures to deal with processing vital substances. Biology, ecology, disciplines that can influence design projects in unexpected and interesting ways. How biological and ecological conditions have influenced the evolution of behavioral and physiological traits of animals can inform and inspire fields such as design and architecture. When nature is associated with a condition of abundance, rather than careful conservation, then how may it be possible in resource-constrained environments to create this kind of excess? Nature provides a rich portfolio of, sometimes unlikely, living technologies that may shape our near-future lifestyles in new ways.
Our economic model
is currently hitting a brick wall. Industrial development has brought enormous economic growth, but the linear economic model is unsustainable. Resource-scarcity risks are increasing, leading to more volatile prices and supply chains. Our society is headed for global overshoot and collapse. Steering away from this course requires breaking the current bond between prosperity and material consumption, or ‘decoupling’. In a circular economy, the industrial system is restorative or regenerative by design. Within the circular economy new business models are developed that reduce the need for virgin raw materials. This is accomplished by rethinking how production chains can become closed loops.
The gap between the rich and the poor
is becoming bigger, not smaller. Many communities are seeing that new ways of addressing these challenges are needed, approaches which acknowledge the interrelated nature of these issues. Along with creating the ability to respond to shocks and threats, it is about increasing a community’s capacity to respond pro-actively and enhance well-being even while under stress. Emphasizing the dynamic nature of communities and the fact that they are always changing.
The next, long-term wave of innovation and growth
will be formed by symbioses among the rapidly emerging nanosciences and nanotechnologies, biotechnology and life-sciences, and information and computer technology together with cognitive sciences and neurotechnologies — the ‘NBIC cluster’. Cycles of technology-induced social and economic change have accelerated in recent decades and are likely to move even faster, there is exponential rather than linear growth for some areas of technological progress.
Cities are open, dissipative and highly complex systems
with innumerable sub-systems: economic, transport, social and educational, to name a few. Ecological systems have certain carrying capacities and so do cities, but these can be modified over time as the city changes in response to internal pressures and external stimuli. Such continuous adaptation is essential for survival. Cities cannot remain static, or return to the past. The complexity and unpredictability of the effects of climate change on social-ecological, economic systems makes it necessary to abandon the perception of a global steady state.
Instead, managing complex coevolving systems for sustainability requires the ability to cope with, adapt to and shape without losing options for future development. It requires resilience – the capacity to buffer perturbations, self-organize, learn and adapt, grass-roots initiatives and local participation/collaboration. Secondly it requires adaptability –the capacity to change in spatial and architectural design.
Similarly, investments in one urban system to address external impacts can help to improve resiliency in another individual systems. Effecting (a multitude of different) economic and social networks, where the latter are more or less randomly, interconnected or confronted with each other in space and time. A key aspect of this process is to understand the cause and affect chains of influences and to identify which particular systems are vulnerable to impacts.
We develop a catalyst strategy: enhancing the flows and connectedness of the city so that all pieces of the urban system are finely linked nodes in an integrated network. The nodal network, space of flows and networking logic. An important characteristic of the short loops and networks is their self-managing and sharing capacity. New investment and –public- private- finance models, organizational structures, governance models.
- Research on Operational Framework :An adaptable urban systems model suitable fr urban transitions. The urban systems model covers all aspects of urban systems (physical, ecological, social, economics, welbeing, talent development, etc)
- Predictive Analytics and Profiling: an indepth analyses, profiles -DNA-standards, and transition pathways leading to urban resilience.Predictive modeling identifies and represents underlying relationships in data in order to understand and explain the urban systems to support predictions, forecasts or classifications about future events
- Supportive Software Systems: in order to analyze, quantify and determine outcomes from a limited number of key indices, and a very high number of data inputs, appropriate, accessible and reliable computer software wil support to understand the urban system.
I have the opportunity to spend time with amazing people. These include everything from researchers, educators, students, working in basic science laboratories looking for nature’s recipes, to architects working on projects collaborating directly with engineers, and the never ending flow of creative students who keep willingly signing up for experiments.