Urban spaces are inextricably linked to the ecology of our planet and there is a compelling case for building new cities and retrofitting or expanding existing ones in ways that work in harmony with nature, by linking ecological and human systems. The city can become an ecosystem that embeds nature and people as equal partners to help rebalance growing urbanization. The objective is to achieve a city that works in equilibrium and balance with nature, rather than against it, to address the current excesses of urban living.
A human development approach to resilience focuses on people and their interactions, where power and social position are important factors. Resilience is to be built at the level of both individuals and society—in terms of their individual capabilities and social competence.
It is that our cities face enormous challenges, it’s a complex task. Simple reductionist explanations are no longer adequate. There is no simplistic, one-way plan that can be mechanically applied to guarantee success in any eventuality. Cities are unable to manage the current scale and rate of change and are searching for better solutions. A new paradigm, appropriate for the new order is required: urban resilience.
Resilience begins with two radical premises. The first is that humans and nature are strongly coupled and co-evolving, and should therefore be conceived of as one “social-ecological” system. The second is that the long-held assumption that systems respond to change in a linear, predictable fashion is simply wrong. According to resilience thinking, systems are in constant flux; they are highly unpredictable and self-organizing, with feedbacks across time and space. In the jargon, they are complex adaptive systems, exhibiting the hallmarks of complexity. Resilience focuses on tipping points. It looks at gradual stresses, such as climate change, as well as chance events—things like storms, fires, even stock market crashes—that can tip a system into another equilibrium state from which it is difficult, if not impossible, to recover. From a systems standpoint, what cities are doing is creating a network—which in itself could strengthen resilience.
Some things are certain: economies will grow, greenhouse gases will accumulate, more people will be born than will die across the planet. But how exactly consumption, climate, population, and other factors will interact is anyone’s guess. In that context, when risk and uncertainty are inevitable, providing the capacity to absorb change—building for resilience—is the only rational response
Seeing cities as social-ecological systems in which human social systems and artifacts, such as technology, and the biophysical systems provided by nature are closely coupled. This shift encourages the use of ecological concepts such as metabolic flows, adaptive capacity, response diversity, ecosystem resilience and patch dynamics to find novel solutions to the structure and functioning of the city, while concepts such as ecological engineering and biomimicry guide the development of form and technological solutions.
A methodological and thoughtful resilience-based approach for urban design/development/dynamics allows full leveraging of the unique capacities of the urban diversity and extended value network and, as a result, becomes a driver for innovation. It helps providing truly sustainable socio-economic & ecologic transition of our cities. This ‘biotic city’ in its design is guided by the question ‘how would nature design a resilient city?’ ‘Bionic’ refers to Biomimicry as design principle and integrated converging technologies: the examination of nature, its models, systems, processes, elements and converging technology to emulate or take inspiration from in order to solve human problems.
Imagine an adaptive collective of interconnected and interdependent city, shape-shifting, color changing, dynamic architectures, that is sensitive to their surroundings, fused to form a complex adaptive system in sync with the Earth’s natural processes. The city’s relationship with nature would be hand-in-glove, wherein ecosystem services and man-made bionic technologies engaged in symbiotic relationships spanning from the molecular to the metropolis in scale.