Created: 19 February 2026
by Lana Radchenko
The future of human settlements is forecasted to be challenged by population growth and ongoing urbanisation: by 2025, 68% of all people in the world will live in cities, which will put additional pressure on their already underperforming and ageing infrastructures, housing availability and management, sharpened by the degradation of ecosystem services, biodiversity loss and waste products. Cities are a human-made, unique system that is aggressively unwelcome and ignorant to ecosystems. The densely populated settlements are displacing green and blue infrastructure within hardscape structures, which contributes to biodiversity loss and nature degradation. Despite the fact that cities' footprint is 3% of the Earth's surface, they globally extract and consume 70% of resources, and produce three-quarters of the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in return [1]. The forecasted growth of the urban population from 55% to 68% by the United Nations in the next 25 years [2] is threatening the worsening of ecosystem service conditions. Urban land will increase by 280 - 490 thousand km2 from 2016 to 2050, which will cause a loss of 110 - 190 thousand km2 of natural habitats globally [3].
At the same time, urban areas heavily rely on ecosystem services, the direct or indirect benefits that humans receive from nature. Provisioning, regulation and supporting services are supporting human vital needs of a wide spectrum of necessities: from air, water, sunlight, food to climate regulation, medicines and well-being. Ecosystem services are essential for human survival. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, approximately 60% of the ecosystem services (including 70% of regulating and cultural services) are being degraded or used unsustainably. That decline has been happening over the last 50 years, and the pace of these changes is more rapid and extensive 'than in any comparable period of time in human history' [4].
The global climatic changes, caused by anthropogenic activity, also challenge ecosystem services and existing species. The 2°C temperature increase, caused by the consumption of fossil fuels incubated by deforestation and green land occupation, leads to a sea level rise, extreme climate shocks and increasing friction of natural disasters. These deviations from the norm impact on ecosystems and aggravate biodiversity loss. The forecasts show not optimistic scenarios variations of which depend on human gas emission production, but even taking into account the minimal warming predictions, the earth's species extinction will reach 9–13% [5]. Despite COP21's agreements of keeping the temperature increase not higher than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, global carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, and cities are responsible for over 70% of global CO2 emissions [6]. This advocates for urgency to tackle the anthropogenic impact by rethinking the current approach to developing or redeveloping the built environment.
Simultaneously, cities are innovation hubs, where more tangible and rapid applications are possible due to advanced policy and governance decision-making. Local authorities are capable of implementing mitigation strategies and frameworks in a more effective way, because of their more direct control over planning and land use policies, physical built environment management, metabolic flows management, and enforcement of industrial regulations [7]. For example, the Mayor of London has set a more ambitious target: stabilising carbon dioxide emissions in 2025 at 60 per cent below 1990 levels versus the UK government’s target of a 60 per cent reduction from 2000 levels by 2050 [8]. That shows that urban environments could take the role of catalysts by benefiting from the concentration of social capital and innovations.
The urban built environment is a complex, multi-layered and dynamic structure challenged by non-direct external impacts such as climate change, but also by waste products: hard waste, air and water pollution. This is a result of a non-cyclic or linear process, which does not exist in natural ecosystems. For changing the current state and for seeing more visible results towards sustainable co-existence of cities and nature together, the current urban design mindset should be shifted. Biomimicry is the concept, which focuses on learning from ecological systems — more successful, time-tested and a model of similar complexity as cities [9]. The built environment industry is applying its principles to the projects, but the most successful examples are focused on building-scale existing in isolation from the wider context. The essay aims to explore existing district and city-scale projects and assess the efficiency of their performance as a circular system.
In 1997 Janine Benyus, a natural science writer, proposed this name for ‘a new science that studies nature's models and then imitates or takes inspiration from these designs and processes to solve human problems’ [1]. ‘The Biomimicry Revolution’ was proposed as a counterweight to the Industrial Revolution – natural expansion by humans and exploitation of its resources. Industrialisation and urbanisation are based on a non-cycling process, which is one of the main causes of urban challenges today. The urban metabolism in cities is linear and requires extensive energy, and produces waste and pollution [2]. Benyus suggests learning innovation and sustainability from nature – a system successfully operating and evolving for 3.8 billion years. To make this process more digestible for implementation, it is proposed to distinguish three levels of biomimicry: organism, behaviour and ecosystems. While the first and second levels are focused on researching individual organisms and their behaviour patterns, and are more practised in architecture, the third type is more applicable for urban areas due to its complex and multi-layered structure, aiming to mimic the entire ecosystem.
The Benyus levels concept has been developed by Maibritt Pedersen Zari. The book 'Regenerative Urban Design and Ecosystem Biomimicry' explains and analyses how built environment specialists practice the approach. The organism level learns from a specific species or its anatomical features, for example, it is mentioned that Waterloo International Terminal is designed inspired by the pangolin and the snake's flexible skin for dealing with air pressure changes caused by train movements. That approach has been practised in the design of industrial objects and buildings, and could be limited by a particular form. That could have pros and cons. That method is more accessible for designers due to its high focus on specific organisms, but mimicking biological characteristics without understanding of integration and a wider role of a body in the life-cycle might not contribute to a circular system approach.
Behaviour level mimicry learns from organisms' behaviour and their survival strategies. By researching habitats, people can learn how to adapt to extremes of weather, resource shortage and co-existence. The classic example of that level and the biomimicry concept in general is Estate Building in Harare, Zimbabwe. Mick Pearce, an architect of the building, had implemented a passive cooling system mimicking termites' mound-building behaviour. That approach requires ethical decisions and analysis of the adaptability of behaviours in a human context. The behaviour patterns of species could misalign with human rights and humanism.
The ecosystem level mimics complex interconnections between organisms and the environment in specific climatic conditions. The built environment could learn how ecosystems contain and support the survival of organisms, and how its design approach could be shifted from isolated and unrelated built-up patches towards co-functioning systems. Ecosystem level mimicry is harder to apply because of the complexity and non-obvious organisation of ecosystems. The partial implementation of ecosystems could lead to inefficient or ineffective attempts to tackle urban problems. That explains the limited number of case studies exploring the integration of ecosystem patterns in urban environments.
However, learning from nature's complexity could help to move from aiming to reduce damage to the environment to contribution and symbiosis between the built environment and ecological systems [10]. As a conceptual framework, objectives of regenerative design projects could be formulated as a desire to reach the absolute state - mimicking the main characteristics of nature: time-proven, self-sustaining, circular and symbiotic. The efficiency of implemented biomimic strategies could be proven over time by collecting performance data and by analysing how adaptive they could be to social, economic and climatic changes. The self-sustain criterion could reveal a level of area dependence on external supply chains and resources. Tracking of waste and pollution production shows how circular an urban system is, while analysing symbiosis presents tells about biodiversity prosperity and the balance between anthropogenic performance and ecosystems. These ambitious aspects of the framework help to assess and visualise the gaps towards a fully regenerative urban environment.
Reaching nature's level in terms of these characteristics is the extreme objective. The current state of urban areas is a compound, heterogeneous structure, and permeability, which strongly depends on the global supply chains. For example, the Circular Economy Action Plan 2020 (CEAP) was created to accelerate the transition from the Linear economic model towards a circular economy in the European Union. 'The action plan includes initiatives addressing the entire life cycle of products, including how products are designed, as well as ensuring that waste is prevented and that used resources are kept in the EU economy for as long as possible' [12]. However, the EU does not have political influence on the other countries, which are suppliers of raw materials, whose extraction and processing are associated with half of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than 90% of biodiversity loss and pressure on water resources [13]. On the other hand, it is a step ahead of the status quo and a sign of the issue's recognition.
This essay asks a question: how far are the existing biomimetic case studies from nature's time-proven, self-sustaining, circular and symbiotic performance? For doing that, this essay suggests comparing the imperative with the most highly performative case study out of existing developments, which used the biomimicry concept as a design approach. This radical qualitative review could help to focus design thinking on indicated gaps and unsolved issues in the sustainable urban development practice. For a case study selection the existing databases of biomimetic projects. In August 2024, Borham O., Croxford B., and Wilson D., published their Biomimetic Strategy for Sustainable Resilient Cities: Review across Scales and City Systems research, whose goal is to create a database of biomimic case studies for guiding architects and planners on how to apply the biomimic approach in the urban context. As a result of a systematic review, the list provides information about the projects where nature's organisms, processes, or ecosystems are mimicked in the built environment.
The projects are categorised by their biomimicry levels: Organism Level (OL), Behaviour Level (BL), and Ecosystem Level (EL). Each project is dissected into a list of biomimetic strategies, which are extracted from case study proposals. The database shows that biomimicry principles have been implemented into the built environment, but not all case studies are holistic and not limited by one urban system. The most complex project from the database is the Rieselfeld and Vauban neighbourhoods in Freiburg city (Germany), which implemented thirty-four biomimicry strategies. This case study captures most of the city systems, except Food: Energy and Carbon, Infrastructure and Buildings, Mobility and Transport, Air Quality, Governance and Data, Waste, Water, Biodiversity and Green Infrastructure. The biomimic strategies are mimicking the ecosystem level and implemented at the urban scale. Additionally to that, the ecosystem as a natural inspirational model benefits the comprehensiveness of the solutions. This case study was selected for qualitative evaluation.
The ‘Green City’ of Freiburg has been a pioneer in the urban sustainable transition and energy-efficient building sector since the 1970s, and, in the early 1990s, the city became internationally well-known as an example for green and sustainable development. Rieselfeld and Vauban districts were newly built on lands previously used for sewage farms and army barracks, respectively, located within a 2-kilometre proximity from the city centre. The innovative approach went beyond Rieselfeld and Vauban eco-districts' boundaries, and rethought public transport, energy production, and waste recycling at the city scale [11]. The case study is an opportunity to look at how these progressive ideas have paid off and evolved through the last 50 years.
1. Time-proven: Is it still working efficiently?
Vauban and Rieselfeld districts were pioneering for their time: innovative infrastructure, building technologies, and 'bottom-up planning processes' driven by environmental activists and cooperatives' communities. The Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986 was a trigger for the requested transformation of energy sources. The strategy to find alternative sources of energy to nuclear and fossil fuel energy appeared as a governmental reaction to citizens' protests against a nuclear plant implementation in the city. As a result of democratic political expression, the new energy policy was based on three statements: energy saving, efficient technologies, and renewable energy sources. It was proposed to diversify the way of producing energy on the city scale: wind turbines, geothermal energy, combined heating and power plants and biomass. On the building scale were introduced low-energy and passive design strategies and solar panels on the roofs were introduced.
Vauban became a testbed for solar energy: the involved planners, architects, and craftspeople have been learning about how to achieve a high energy efficiency through insulation and to meet the Freiburg low-energy house standard. This constant 'learning by doing' experiment went beyond the initial targets. Additionally to low energy and passive houses, a ‘plus-energy neighbourhood’ was built by a local architect Rolf Discho, a solar-architect pioneer, on the eastern edge of Vauban. These combinations of building types, as a result of constraint policy support, social engagement in the process and technological innovations, made the transition from low-energy buildings to plus-energy buildings possible [15]. This example had a national impact - the latest Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG 2017) aims to consume at least 80 % of renewable energy by 2050 [16].
2. Self-sustaining: How dependent are the districts on the national and global supply chains?
Freiburg is an innovation hub, focused on future-oriented industries such as medicine, environmental technology and high-tech manufacturing, deeply integrated into international markets. These sectors are focused on the final stages of the production rather than the end-to-end self-sufficient cycle: final integration, calibration, and sale of complex medical devices. The distribution of their products heavily relies on long-distance logistics and raw materials and components worldwide. Recognising this insecurity and dependency, the local authorities are trying to foster local manufacturing.
3. Circular: How many waste products do the districts produce?
Vauban and Rieselfeld districts were planned in alignment with a concept of a compact city design with reliance on a vast public transport system, cycling and walking infrastructure. However, it was a result of a 40-year social and policy evolution toward sustainable transportation in Freiburg. Before being called Germany's 'environmental capital', Freiburg was a car-dominated city - from the 1950s to the 1970s, motorisation was higher than for West Germany as a whole [17]. But in the 1970s, the city started gradually implementing sustainable transport solutions, starting from introducing a cycling infrastructure and a pedestrian-only zone in the City Centre, followed by the light rail network extension. These solutions were forgotten by car use restrictions: improving public transport and active travel modes connectivity, traffic-calming and promoting green modes. As a result, from 1992 to 2005, transport CO2 emissions per capita in Freiburg fell by 13.4%. However, the CO2 emission reduction solutions are mainly focused on the building and transport sectors, while the main contributors are the housing and services sectors and industry. Despite that, the City Council voted for the target of carbon neutrality by 2050.
In addition to the decarbonisation movement, the district's design aims to reduce the amount of
hard waste products by implementing a biomimicry strategy such as biogas and fermentation of bioorganic waste to energy, upcycle/recycle and using recyclable materials. Overall 69% of total waste is recycled in Freiburg. Non-recyclable waste is incinerated at the Breisgau Industrial Park becoming a source of generated energy and heat in around 30 km from Freiburg. Additionally to that the city aims to reduce waste disposal.
4. Symbiotic: Is the development beneficial for local biodiversity recovery and thriving?
Freiburg is Germany's most forested city. Located between the Upper Rhine Valley and the Black Forest, encompassing 5,138 ha with a diverse species composition, no species exceeding 17 % [14]. On the planning level, the masterplans for Vauban and Rieselfeld districts implemented a series of environment-oriented urban landscape solutions: green corridors and belts, protection of native landscapes, forests and waterfront, interconnections between protected landscapes and urban areas by biotopes. The interconnected areas of green and blue systems create the habitats and migration routes for flora and fauna. The district's scapes are outstanding by the proportion of forest landscapes, permeable surfaces and greenery. On the former sewage farms and the military site were planted 600 hectares of green infrastructure with 44,000 trees.
Under many current definitions sustainable design seeks to minimise pollution rather than achieve clean air, soil and water. It minimises energy use, rather than using energy from non-damaging renewable sources. It minimises waste, rather than eliminating it altogether by creating positive cycles of resource use. Freiburg city is an opponent of this statement. As a result of tactical planning and constant reflection, it has been reaching a neutral state, with the introduction of a complex of fostering, innovative and revolutionary solutions for its time. However, Freiburg's example shows that the dependency on external resources and integration into the global supply chains impact on its full circularity and resilience. It is worsened by its focus on high-tech manufacturing and dependency on raw resources and materials.
Despite this insecurity, this development shows the example of a robust foundation for future improvements and adjustments. The community-based approach and constant assessment of potential points of policy or urban development improvements are helping to challenge the non-circular elements of the urban system and to challenge the current state. Biomimicry approaches could continue to contribute to that process by influencing the way of thinking, ideas for new technologies and their implications. It has a reputation of a promising concept that contributes to regenerative design, making urban areas less vulnerable, more resilient, and sustainable.
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