SUSTAINABLE CITY

Cities of the Future Will Be Full of Nature-Based Solutions

Cities are here to stay. So, what about nature-based solutions for cities? My conversation with Sao Paolo Professor Renata Marè.

Do you know what systemic solutions are? Nature-based solutions? Regenerative business models? If you do, read on to find out what solutions there are for cities. If not, I’ll start with a little explanation of the why, how, what. And then you will learn about the cities.

It all starts with the need for regeneration (see the article below if you don’t know what it means). Our planet is slowly dying and all we, humans, can think of is windmills, solar panels, and energy-slurping new technologies. To preserve our planet as it is now. Sustainability.

Well, keep on dreaming, girls and guys. We don’t want our planet to remain as it is. Our planet is a polluted mess! We want to do better. We want to align the economy and ecology and give back to nature for all the resources she gives us. It’s the only way the future will be kind to us, humans.

It’s only logical. We will allow nature’s abundance to be. Not control. Just work with the emerging natural wealth. Exuberance unleashed. Plentiful. And in return, she provides us with enough goodies to live a beautiful life within planetary boundaries.

We need to think differently. But we can learn that. So why wait?

We need to find solutions for an abundant future. So why not start now?

Renata Marè, University Professor in Sao Paolo, asked me to shine a light on opportunities for this city in Brazil. Have an open conversation about solutions for this multi-million-inhabitant city. Of course, I was glad to do that. The resulting 1.5-hour talk will be available on YouTube shortly.

So what does it all mean?

Systemic solutions — this means zooming out to see the interrelated problems and find the solutions that solve more than one problem. Aligning the economy, ecology, and the human spirit. Finding solutions that combine our economy and our humanness. Peace. Equality. Health. Connections.

Nature-based solutions — this means that people want to fulfill their basic needs AND nature gets to be regenerated. Unleashing abundance. Two-in-one. Better than it was before.

Luckily, many entrepreneurial people have jumped on the bandwagon. They are redesigning our world. Our materials. Our buildings. Our products. Our food. Our social systems. Our laws.

And in this story, I’ll be telling you some of it. There’s so much to know. We’ll be studying… And finding the answers… All of us together…

Here’s a shortened version of our talk.

Systemic Design in an Urban Environment

Renata: Desiree, it is a pleasure to have you in our MBA Course — Planning and Management of Cities, discipline Smart Cities.

To give my students the basics to better understand your incredible work, I will start our talk with the concept of “Systemic Design”, which combines systems thinking mindset and tools with human-centered design.

Said that, could you mention some examples of your work with “Systemic Design”, preferably in the urban environment?

Desiree: Thanks for having me in your MBA course, Renata. I’m really glad that so many of your students are interested in Blue Economy and Systemic Design.

Let me first explain that Systemic Design is a method of zooming out, seeing the full picture of interrelated problems, and finding solutions that tackle several of those problems at the same time. And building a resilient business with it.

One obvious example is greening a city. The problems are air pollution, CO2, burnouts, stress, and drought in cities. When we design our buildings with plants, trees, green roofs, and green surfaces, all these problems are tackled.

Studies have found that people have become too detached from nature. And their wellbeing is enhanced by plant walls inside and outside of buildings. Cleaning the air in the process.

In Venlo, we now have a school and a municipality office that cleans outdoor and indoor air with plants and uses natural ventilation (without energy slurping systems, just like the big ants, termites, do in their hills) for air quality.

Another example is Dycle, a diaper cycle that stimulates communities of parents to become active with biodegradable diapers in Berlin city. The company is started by conceptual artist Ayumi Matsuzaka. The diapers made of local, abundantly available materials, are being turned into fertile soil (terra preta like in the Amazon which stores lots of carbon) on which trees are grown and fruit will be produced as food for the children. A real cycle alright!

And a third example is Straw by Straw. This company started by a young woman, Everlyn Liu, is creating awareness with natural straws in bars, hotels, and restaurants. The straws are made of rest materials from organic farmers around the city.

The farmers will have an extra income stream to strengthen their business models and the cocktail drinking customers will become aware of the ocean pollution by single-use plastics.

Smart Cities are Using Different Materials

Renata: In your opinion, how can we use “Systemic Design” to improve the smartness (in a broad sense) of a city?

Desiree: Smartness in big cities is badly needed. And I know that many people are putting their hopes on apps and the Internet of Things. But really smart solutions will use natural resources AND give back to nature in their business models by creating e.g. clean air, clean water, and healthy soil.

Our planet is smothered in asphalt and concrete. Water cycles, drought, and lack of drinking water are big problems. Luckily, there are architects and designers that tackle these problems by creating roads and pavements that soak up water and give it off again when needed.

In this article in the Guardian, great solutions are portrayed. I love solutions of sponge cities in China for example. Please don’t be demotivated by the words ‘dumb’ and the non-city-like picture. This article has lots of wisdom to share.

Many new materials are made from local, abundantly available crops, such as bamboo, industrial hemp, tall fast-growing grasses, nettles, algae, and fungi. Design and materials can change so much!

A Multi-Centered City — Local Solutions

Renata: The pandemic of COVID-19 has promoted the concept of “multi-centered city”, which means to move from just one central region in the city — in the sense of its most productive and attractive region — to create a central region on each neighborhood.

This movement can stimulate local and small commerce and production of goods, supplying the basic needs of local consumers and also providing jobs for some local residents. This concept is aligned with The Blue Economy philosophy, first introduced by Prof. Gunter Pauli in 1994.

Given that you are part of the international Blue Economy network, what do you think about this philosophy as a regenerative component for city economies nowadays?

Desiree: I like it very much! Our international Blue Economy network believes in local networks of regenerative businesses that fulfill basic needs and make money as active as possible in their local neighborhood. It’s the economy of the future, ensuring resilient businesses and restoration of our natural resources.

In our regular business models, economies of scale are the norm. Blue Economy works with economies of scope. This means we use synergy as an economic driver and we stack value upon value upon value. And here, value means more than just money, we also recognize other values like clean air, restored water cycles, and human wellbeing.

The oldest Blue Economy example is actually in South America, in Colombia. Las Gaviotas combines healthy water with different trees and crops, water bottles to build with after use, and many other examples of synergy.

For an economy like this to thrive, we need businesses to be diverse in product and cultural embedding. In the past, if your neighbor was successful you copied his concept. Now, we have to make sure that together we fulfill the whole scope needed by a neighborhood. We need a diversity of businesses!

We need to be as self-sufficient as possible. And we need the consumers to adopt a mindset of being co-creators, so they’ll stop spending their money with multi-national corporations, but become proud consumers in their own communities instead.

Why drink monoculture, it-all-tastes-the-same beer? When you can have a local beer brewed with local grains and unique taste? And eat some healthy bread with it, made from the rest-product of the brewery grains?

This way, we’ll use all of our local resources, give regenerative farmers an income, and form local communities full of interaction and enjoyments.

Here is an article about regenerative business models (incl. the beer brewery example) and synergy as a driver:

Belonging to Nature — Regenerative Businesses

Renata: Talking about “Regenerative”, as humans, we have been doing a lot to hurt our planet, our environment, the biodiversity, and ultimately, ourselves. This is mostly due to considering Nature as something to serve us and not something to which we belong. In reality, we belong to Nature, so we must think about our businesses in a different way, a Regenerative one.

In the context of cities, facing the pandemic, and thinking about promoting its resilience through the microeconomy development, which kind of regenerative businesses do you believe could fit?

Desiree: For micro-economy development, the examples I mentioned of regenerative food, beer, fruit juice, and diapers are ideal.

But I also see a whole movement of second-hand clothes repaired in artistic ways and branded so they become a cool trend. Artists and designers are always good to be involved, in a city like yours. They think out-of-the-box and come up with the best ideas…

And as soon as the people in a community adopt the mindset of being co-creators, they will make others enthusiastic and a whole movement will appear. I see communities gardening on rooftops. And communities organizing food-waste-dinners connecting shops, inhabitants, and homeless people.

Healthy River, Healthy City

I see communities and school children monitoring the rivers in their cities in the way Drinkable Rivers promotes. When our rivers become healthy again, it means we care for our water and make sure not to pollute it anymore. Well, you do have a large river in Sao Paolo. It might be time to look at the example of Drinkable Rivers and drum up some interested people.

Cleaning the Soil and Producing Food

Renata: I believe that in my home town, São Paulo, a megacity with more than 12 million inhabitants, urban agriculture could be very useful, both in terms of (part of) food supply and in the generation of work. But, we have a lot of problems to face, before promoting this activity, such as dealing with the number of contaminated areas. Could you share with us your experience with food forests in the Netherlands?

Desiree: Before I talk about food forests, I want to tell you about an example in Amsterdam where they are regenerating polluted areas with plants. Plants can be great purifiers of pollution.

And until the soil is healthy again, instead of building upon it, they have put some boats there and made offices and restaurants in the boats on dry land. It has become a very hip clean-tech playground.

Pollution and urban orchards do go together as a study in England shows. It seems that the pollution is stored in the roots and the stones (pits) and doesn’t affect the edible parts of the fruit. Of course, caution is needed, but more and more research is being done.

Here is information about the Urban Orchard project, where research on food is combined with cleaning contaminated areas.

Food Forests Can Be Tiny

Food forests are a real bridge between natural systems and human systems. And I really believe we should not only restore degraded areas but also make them attractive to humans so they will not be destroyed all over again.

So at the edges and along the paths through natural areas that we leave to the animals, we can definitely create food forests and grow edible and other functional plants and trees.

Food forests are built in layers. Seven layers are possible: tall trees, smaller trees, bushes, herbs, groundcover, roots, and climbers. There’s not much space needed. So also in cities, they become more and more popular.

In India, they promote tiny food forests in a space of 6 parked cars and for the price of an i-phone as you can see in this TED-talk.

Holistic Approach Using a Machete and Intuition

Renata: I am convinced that we need a holistic approach when trying to face urban problems since cities are complex systems. I read your article about the work of Mr. Arie Voorburg and I was thrilled with it because he is completely aligned with this line of thinking.

He uses Artificial Intelligence to simulate a twin city and the interventions needed to find the best solution for some specific problem but considering all its connections in that urban environment (or its complexity). But maybe, the best of his work is that this twin city is based on previous qualitative discussions, made by a group of people particularly interested and committed in solving that problem.

Desiree, I would like to know your opinion about the use of technology as a support to solve city problems. In addition, do you have any thoughts about useful applications to help city governments with the city resilience in times of COVID-19?

Desiree: I believe it is using our hearts and our heads together to find the solutions of the future. We do live in complex systems with complex problems. So first of all it’s important to zoom out and not be afraid to face all problems and dig deep to get at their root causes.

My own method of finding solutions is involving a machete. We need to cut away the stuff that’s not desired and make space for real solutions to emerge. We often need to make radical decisions. Involve all stakeholders to get a foundation for the solutions.

And when we know what the best step is, we can stimulate what’s desired and phase out what we don’t want anymore.

Here’s an article about my machete method.

Holistic Approach Using AI and VR

Arie Voorburg is using the same line of systemic thinking as I do, but he finds solutions with AI and VR. He’s a great man with great vision and wonderful projects! He’s working a lot with Dutch universities and he might well be open to talking to Sao Paolo students to explain his methods.

“We need to combine modern technology, old wisdom, and local culture to find the solutions for the future.”

— Desiree Driesenaar

Personally, I’m in favor of technology. We don’t want to go back to the past, we just need to be smarter than we’ve been before. We need to combine modern technology, old wisdom, and local culture to find the solutions for the future.

However, I have two conditions for technology:

1. Only use the kind of technology that supports life and stop the kind that destroys life
2. Make your business models around the technology flexible. Prevent getting into the next technological lock-in. We have so much trouble fighting vested interests nowadays because the technologies have won ground and the people who get rich from them don’t want us to change our ways. We cannot let that happen again.

Let’s use our brains and our hearts! Let’s think in values for all species instead of just money for a few rich humans!

Island Economies in Indonesia

Renata: Finally, I know that you stayed for three months in Indonesia at the beginning of this year to develop some projects. Could you share them with us?

Desiree: Indonesia is a great country with a broad variety of islands, problems, and solutions. We love the people there. Every island has its own culture and natural splendor.

On Bali, I’ve given a talk at Green School Bali to locals about island economies. Explaining the same things I explain now. How to become self-sufficient and get a vibrant economy going with regenerative methods.

Islands are excellent playgrounds for this kind of thinking because they have natural boundaries that everyone can see and feel. And the sea can be used in creating value as well, with e.g. algae.

At Green School Bali they are educating children and the communities on regenerative rice production, food forests, building with bamboo, and the waste being upcycled.

I wrote about island economies and waste in these two articles:

On Java, we were active in the Ecoshape project ‘Building with Nature’ (see link below). Here, climate mitigation and adaptation come together in a project rebuilding mangrove forest defenses in a special, biodiverse way and combining it with organic fish farming and education.

Seeds of Inspiration

Desiree: Well, students of Brazil, I really hope that after today a small seed of inspiration has taken hold in you and your friends. As humans, we can really do better than we did so far. And the more people understand why and how the more regenerative solutions will emerge.

And the better the future will be for all of us.

Good luck! And please, have fun in the process of regenerative innovation. Fun is fuel for people and if we don’t cherish it, we will burnout.

And Renata, thank you for the opportunity to inspire your students. I hope we can stay in touch. I would love to follow the projects of your students…

And if, after reading this, you want to connect, you can find me on LinkedIn. Or somewhere in our food forest connecting to nature. Wondering about the next city solutions that will emerge because students are thinking differently…

Further reading

After all this rational information, let’s end with a poem.