Becoming a Biophilic City

21 December 2020

By Becks Treharne, Biophilic Urbanism Consultant

What does it take to be a Biophilic City?

Not simply a green or sustainable city, but a truly biophilic one.

Going beyond simple green infrastructure, a biophilic city embeds our biological need to connect with natural environments into its very fabric. It mimics the complexities of the natural world in order to create quality, biodiverse habitats. And it works in harmony with nature to support and strengthen the natural world while also thriving itself.

In order to create a biophilic city there needs to be an emphasis on designing as a holistic ecosystem. This means the city needs to be considered as a whole and not disaggregated parts. Buildings, streets and neighbourhoods of a biophilic city need to mutually reinforce each other while connecting people to the natural world in a way that simple green infrastructure cannot.

To achieve this, two important questions must be answered: how do you design a biophilic city? And whose responsibility is it?

To answer the first question, four principles should be considered:

1. Retain Biophilic Design principles & attributes

Applying these principles and attributes on a city scale

2. Continuity

Ensuring coherence and legibility

3. Connectivity

Linking up destinations across the city

4. Play to local strengths and optimise local assets

Create a unique, localised plan

There are many successful biophilic cities in the world today that are using these principles to deliver biophilic outcomes, namely Singapore, Portland and San Francisco. But there is a city much closer to home that we can also learn from: Birmingham.

Since 2013 Birmingham has been a member of the Biophilic Cities Network, declaring its intention to become the UK’s first biophilic city. Its motivation to pursue this stems from local environmental and health-related issues and the realisation that there is a link between the two. Across the city, about 1 in 4 children are obese by 10 years old, with a percentage of those already being severely obese. The city has recognised that its local environment is a major contributing factor in this through influencing the choices its people make. However, with adjustments to design and a renewed emphasis on the importance of and access to quality nature, local environments can begin to stimulate and encourage better decision making in order to achieve healthier outcomes. Birmingham’s response therefore was in developing an impressive array of projects aimed at enhancing the local environment while simultaneously benefitting human health & wellbeing.

The key to Birmingham’s success so far is the attention it has paid to the above principles. Let’s explore this in more detail using two projects as examples.

Birmingham’s waterways

In a single project, Birmingham has transformed the city and its connection to the natural world. In an effort to optimise its 100 miles of canals, it has discovered an array of biophilic opportunities that benefit both its human inhabitants and the local wildlife. It has unlocked opportunities for roaming the waterways, giving people an increased sense of freedom and exploration as a result.

It has done this in one crucial way: by physically connecting people to the water.

Through creating opportunities to canoe, kayak, canal boat and walk or cycle adjacent to the river, Birmingham has enabled its residents and visitors to interact with the water. These opportunities allow people to connect with the water in more ways than simply viewing it from a distance. They can ride the currents, interact with wildlife, feel it, hear it, smell it and even get in it, revealing a whole new multi-sensory relationship with the rivers.

Linked to this is the coherence and legibility of the river system, which is enhanced by the availability of canal route maps. These show the numerous access points onto the water, and various destinations that can be reached by using the canal system.

In biophilic terms, having this physical connection to the water gives people both direct and indirect experiences of nature. Directly, it brings people in contact with natural landscapes and ecosystems, plants, animals, air, water and weather. Indirectly, it can evoke memories of nature and make you crave more time spent in natural environments; it has an information richness that is satisfying, engaging and intriguing and it exposes users to natural colours and materials. It also gives people different ways to actually experience the space by offering them new viewpoints of the city. Being on the water gives people a new prospect and place of refuge to make them feel safer; the connectivity and continuity of the canal system makes mobility and wayfinding simple, which reduces stress and makes us feel calm; and finally, it can create a cultural and ecological attachment to the city, which in turn has shown to build resilience and an increased interest in wanting to see a place thrive.

Birmingham and the Black Country Biodiversity Action Plan

Focussed on another set of local assets, this action plan sets out to restore and reinforce Birmingham’s natural environment while identifying how this can benefit human health & wellbeing and the local economy.

By boosting biodiversity and making access to nature more accessible and frequent, Birmingham is giving its residents and visitors more opportunities to directly and indirectly experience nature across the city. In addition, it is altering the way that people experience the city in a way that will create a deeper attachment to the area.

Through restoring degraded habitats, Birmingham is strengthening its resilience to climate change by giving nature a chance to thrive. This type of restoration can create ecological corridors that allow wildlife to move more freely through the space, keeping them safer locally. 

Biophilically, this should bring about all of the direct and indirect experiences of nature identified in the waterways project above, but with a couple of additions. Having biodiverse green space permeating the city gives residents and visitors the chance to experience the age, change and patina of time, meaning that they can view the seasons through the way the environment changes. As humans, this keeps us grounded and makes us feel connected to both a place and a time. Another biophilic addition is the idea of integration of parts to wholes. Green spaces can be great ways to link areas of the city that may otherwise have nothing in common. By permeating biodiverse green space into cities, the gaps in between buildings, neighbourhoods and so on can be joined to form a whole, instead of remaining separate parts of a city.

The question now should focus on whose responsibility it is to create these biophilic cities. We know that access to nature is fundamental to living a healthy, meaningful and happy life, especially in a densely urbanised city, but where does the balance lie between citizens and policy makers’ responsibility to embedding this into city design? And how does our ‘right to roam’ impact our ability to achieve this?

Birmingham has an abundance of policy to support the integration of nature into the city, which in turn has supported its citizens desire to make it biophilic. But not all cities will have the backing of their local government. And unlocking citizens freedom to roam these natural, public assets, may prove more difficult than in Birmingham’s case.

Nevertheless, this question is a crucial one to explore, especially given the increased demand for access to nature during the pandemic. We will explore this topic in more detail in a future post - watch this space!

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