The Calyx at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens played host to the Australian launch of Biourbanism :: Cities as Nature, written by McGregor Coxall Founder Adrian McGregor (pictured main).

The book provides a model on how cities can decarbonise, increase resilience to climate change and deliver prosperity. McGregor believes decarbonising the 10,000 cities across the world are the solution to climate change, attributing 75 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

“Cities and citizens are facing an existential threat. 70 percent of the planet’s cities are already dealing with climate change and by 2050, an approximate US$158 trillion of global assets will be at risk – double the total annual output of the global economy,” he says.

“In many ways, Australia is a ‘canary in the coalmine’ on climate impact and our cities and communities are already suffering. Today, we have climate refugees in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales and many people have still not recovered from the 2020 bushfires.”

The model floated by McGregor in the novel adopts new urban science to propose that cities must be reclassified as anthromes, or anthropogenic biomes, a form of human modified nature. The circular model asserts humans and cities exist as a part of nature, not in parallel with it.

“We all exist together inside the biosphere of ‘spaceship earth’, a term coined by (American architect) Buckminster Fuller used to describe the fragile vulnerability of the earth’s ecosystems,” McGregor continues.

“Our planet and our cities are a system of systems, but we have failed to comprehend the best way to work with and not against these ecological systems.”

The model consists of ten systems that capture cities’ function: the five Bio Systems include citizens, food, landscape, waste and water - the five Urban Systems are economy, energy, infrastructure, mobility, and technology. The book also discusses the use of digital twin technologies and AI to predict the impacts of natural disasters.

“Human beings or Homo sapiens are part of nature, part of the environment. Unfortunately, we’ve detached ourselves from this notion, and it has impacted our understanding of how cities function and what drives them,” McGregor says.

“Biourbanism is a new tool to help cities manage the challenges ahead and continue to be prosperous, wonderful places to live.”

The model and theory created by McGregor has been developed over the last 15 years and tested over a range of large-scale projects. The book is compiled into four chapters, with an objective of uniting cities around decarbonisation and resilience through an easily applied tool.

The first chapter discusses the rise and fall of cities, the second about the challenges of climate emergencies, the third describing the science that sits within the Biourbanism framework and explains the ten systems, while chapter four is about how to deliver Biourbanism.

“This book is written for current and future generations. It’s for us, our children, and our children’s children,” McGregor says.

“It’s a tool to decarbonise cities, increase climate resilience, create prosperity and change the course of history - the time to act is now.”

McGregor Coxall has additionally launched its fourth discipline, the Biourbanism Lab, an urban research entity established to put the Biourbansim model into practice.

For more information regarding the book, click here.

Jarrod Reedie

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