The upcom­ing weeks and months, sup­port­ed by rec­om­men­da­tions from sci­en­tists to nar­row down the effects from the new COVID-19 virus, should be used to under­stand how much poten­tial there is to real­ly become part of a crit­i­cal mass which wants to con­tribute to make the city of the future a more resilient, a more cul­ture -based and - most of all - a more life-affirm­ing envi­ron­ment. Based on the cur­rent rate of glob­al urban­iza­tion, by the year 2050 cities will har­bour near­ly 70 per­cent of human­i­ty. That trans­lates rough­ly to 6.8 bil­lion urban dwellers. For near­ly 90 per­cent of our exis­tence, we were appar­ent­ly con­tent to wan­der about, seek­ing refuge in tem­po­rary shel­ters, hunt­ing game ani­mals, and har­vest­ing wild fruits, grains and nuts. This all changed around 10,000 years ago when we invent­ed farm­ing. There­after, agri­cul­ture of many types rapid­ly spread across the globe, afford­ing us the lux­u­ry of not hav­ing to hunt and gath­er for a liv­ing. Cities soon rose up adja­cent to farm­land. Ani­mal hus­bandry gained in pop­u­lar­i­ty much ear­li­er that the first farms but became part of the agri­cul­tur­al land­scape when the cul­ti­va­tion of crops arose. Togeth­er, these two activ­i­ties held the promise of pro­vid­ing human pop­u­la­tions with a sus­tain­able food sup­ply and an ani­mal labour force to make it work. Whole civili- zations evolved from these ear­ly days of food security.

But as we steadi­ly pro­gressed into the mod­ern era, urban cul­tures explod­ed into an astound­ing num­ber of activ­i­ties not relat­ed to grow­ing food. As the phys­i­cal area of the built envi­ron­ment increased to make room for these new activ­i­ties, farms were forced to relo­cate out­side the city lim­its. Most cities grew hel­ter-skel­ter into rab­bit war­rens of dense­ly packed build­ings, mean­der­ing nar­row streets, and a pas­sel of bazaars, back alleys and dead-ends. Inad­ver­tent­ly, they became very unhealthy places in which to live, and many still are. Today, the sit­u­a­tion is even more exag­ger­at­ed, with most farm­land locat­ed hun­dreds to thou­sands of miles away from dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas, cre­at­ing daunt­ing logis­tics chal­lenges whose sole intent is to pro­vide a reli­able, steady flow of food items for city dwellers. In addi­tion, many coun­tries do not have enough farm­land to feed their own peo­ple and are forced to import the major­i­ty of their food from oth­er regions of the globe. For exam­ple, most coun­tries of the Arab Emi­rates import over 90 per­cent of their food, and many of them obtain most of their fresh water by dis­till­ing it from the ocean using oil or nat­ur­al gas to gen­er­ate steam that is then con­densed and stored for use.

Plan­ning the growth and devel­op­ment of the built envi­ron­ment was with­in the purview of landown­ers, for the most part, and that is still true today. As allud­ed to, life was pre­car­i­ous for most urban inhab­i­tants. Ensur­ing that their health and well-being were part of basic munic­i­pal goals and mis­sion char­ters did not man­i­fest until the advent of pub­lic health in the mid­dle to late 1800s. Com­merce was the eco­nom­ic dri­ver that came to define the evolv­ing urban land­scape. Chron­ic ill­ness­es spe­cif­ic to urban­ites impact­ed by expo­sure to sol­id and liq­uid indus­tri­al and munic­i­pal wastes, as well as being forced to breathe pol­lut­ed air is com­mon­place through­out the less devel­oped world[9], large­ly because main­tain­ing a clean envi­ron­ment under the cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion of cen­tral­ized grids is labour and tech­nol­o­gy-inten­sive, and hence expensive.

Change is what defines Earth’s nat­ur­al sys­tems, and it is also true for the built envi­ron­ment. Typ­i­cal­ly, in most mod­ern cities, there are few build­ings that have sur­vived from the 19th cen­tu­ry to the present. New tech­nolo­gies and mate­ri­als for con­st- ruc­tion cou­pled with social pres­sure from a bur­geon­ing mid­dle class has altered the city into a shape-shifter of glass, con­crete, and steel. All one has to do is look up in order to get an idea as to the rapid­i­ty of change in today’s mod­ern city. The urban sky­line through­out most of the devel­oped world is punc­tu­at­ed with con­struc­tion cranes and half-fin­ished new mul­ti-storey edi­fices. Two world wars have also had a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on the slope of the curve defin­ing the rate of estab­lish­ment of new build­ings with­in cities. Con­sid­er the fact that most Euro­pean and Asian cities were severe­ly affect­ed in both armed con­flicts, with some com­plete­ly flat­tened just 80 years ago. Today, they have all recov­ered and most are shin­ing exam­ples of modernity.

What is wor­ri­some is that there is not a sin­gle mod­ern urban cen­tre that is com­plete­ly off the energy/water/food grids (i.e., self- suf­fi­cient), no mat­ter that we have the tech­nolo­gies to do so. The car­bon foot­print of every city, regard­less of loca­tion, is out of synch with what is required in order to slow down the rate of cli­mate change due to the gen­er­a­tion of green­house gasses. In the opin­ion of the Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change, and many oth­er organi- zations as well, if this trend con­tin­ues for just a few more decades, it will be too late to reverse or sta­bi­lize the rate of warming.

The cat­a­stroph­ic col­lapse of Earth’s ter­res­tri­al and aquat­ic ecosys­tems will har­bin­ger our own extinc­tion if we fail to act. Solu­tions are des­per­ate­ly need­ed to address this sit­u­a­tion if cities and the 6.5 bil­lion indi­vid­u­als soon to live in them are to sur­vive into the next millennium.

This chap­ter is a syn­the­sis of poten­tial solu­tions, all of which are based on the con­cept of bio­mimicry of the trees that define tem­per­ate zone forests. These high­ly evolved life forms pro­duce food (e.g., fruits, nuts, berries, leaves) essen­tial to the lives of count­less for­est dwellers, sequester car­bon in their trunks, branch­es and roots, har­vest rain­wa­ter, and con­vert sun­light into chem­i­cal ener­gy via photosynthesis.

If a city were to incor­po­rate these same func­tions, using advanced tech­nolo­gies, into its infra­struc­ture, then instead of being par­a­sitic on the sur­round­ing land­scape, a city would actu­al­ly func­tion to sup­port the recov­ery of dam­aged ter­res­tri­al and aquat­ic ecosys­tems by sim­ply becom­ing self-suf­fi­cient. Most impor­tant­ly, each build­ing with­in that new city would be off the energy/food/water grids. Since they would be con­struct­ed using a new appli­ca­tion of wood, cross-lam­i­nat­ed tim­ber, they could also become a major play­er in the car­bon cycle by seques­ter­ing it in their actu­al struc­ture, just like the trees from which they are made. The result would be a for­est of sky­scrap­ers that, seen from a func­tion­al per­spec­tive, would be the equiv­a­lent of an intact tem­per­ate zone for­est. Tech­nolo­gies and the antic­i­pat­ed eco­log­i­cal ben­e­fits for catalysing this rad­i­cal urban trans­for­ma­tion are sum­ma­rized below.