BIO-POLIS · BIOphilic MetroPOLIS, a holistic model for urban planning and building climate resilience
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-11-01 → 2024-12-31
- EU contribution
- €232,394
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
BIOphilic MetroPOLIS, a holistic model for urban planning and building climate resilience
Rapid urbanization in recent decades poses threats to social stability, economic prosperity, and environmental and human health, prioritized in European and Global Agendas. Despite cities occupying just 3% of Earth’s landmass, they significantly contribute to and suffer from the climate crisis. In response, cities are implementing programs centered on healthier design, sustainable planning, and greenification. While reducing environmental impact, these actions often overlook social implications, including the health benefits of nature. Modern lifestyle and widespread technology addiction led us to spend up to 90% of our time indoors, negatively impacting the urban quality of life. Conversely, growing evidence indicates that regular exposure to nature improves our health and social relationships. This explains the growing interest in biophilia, grounded in humans’ innate affiliation with living beings and systems. Albeit several disciplines having proven multiple benefits of biophilia for both people and the environment, there are limitations to broader and intersectoral progress: issues such as scientific objectivity, measurability, upscaling, and the implementation of Biophilic Urbanism require further investigation. To address these gaps, BIO-POLIS promotes the biophilic city as a holistic urban model to enhance livability by restoring human-nature interaction and to foster climate resilience by maximizing the use of nature in city planning. In compliance with SDGs (3,11,13,15,17), and addressing the 5th and 6th societal challenges of Horizon 2020, BIO-POLIS acknowledges the pivotal role of natural capital in making cities more inclusive, safe, and resilient.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
In the Anthropocene climate change is the greatest threat to socio-economical prosperity, environmental and human health as well as a priority in the European and Global Agenda. In an increasing and unbalanced urban planet, metropolises play a key role in addressing climate challenge but this requires a significant paradigm shift in urban planning. Nature contributes to urban climate and improves the quality of life. The growing attention to biophilic design confirms this power. BIO-POLIS aims to promote biophilic metropolis as a holistic urban model able to enhance livability restoring the man-nature relationship and to drive decision-makers in placing nature at the core of planning as the most ecological strategy to build climate resilience. The research is designed as a comparative study among overpopulated zonobiomes. Through an integrated, interdisciplinary and cross-scale method, it will advance the framework on Biophilic Urbanism, map the natural capital by digitalisation, explore biophilic features and processes, assess the biophilic potential in building climate resilience, provide an atlas of biophilic mitigation and adaption nature-based solutions in different biomes. The proposal will have multiple impacts. The biophilic guiding model aspires to turn the functional approach of city planning into a scientific one based on the human-nature interaction. Project results will influence citizens increasing public awareness of urban nature and inspiring biophilic lifestyle. Comparing various geo-contexts will encourage international cooperation among cities and partner institutions towards global and local strategies and boost the European role in R&I for sustainable development and climate change. The excellence of partners will offer me the best training and research experience to become an expert in urban challenges, complementary knowledge to be transferred, advanced skills and a leading network to maximise my career prospects both in and outside academia.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT · DelftCoordinatorNetherlands
- MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY · CambridgeUnited States
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union