Inside Il Sole 24 Ore, an article by Giuseppe Barbera entitled the ‘urbanocene’ of the near future presents the book Transforming Biocities: Designing Urban Spaces Inspired by Nature, whose editors include Stefano Boeri.
The volume is part of the studies of the Research Department of Stefano Boeri Architetti, who is present with various contributions in the book and who has been working on the concept of “biocities” for some time – note the participation on 20 April at the inauguration of the EFI Biocities Facility and “Cities in the Age of Forests”, organised by the European Forest Institute (EFI) at the Sala Protomoteca in Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome.
The article focuses on the main themes of the book, starting from the history of cities – from the first settlement in Uruk, to ancient Greece and the first urban plans of the 17th century; up to today, aware that in 2050 68% of the 9.7 billion inhabitants of planet Earth will live in cities (two centuries ago 7) from which 70% of carbon dioxide emissions, the main culprit of climate change, will already come. To make up the name of the geological epoch that follows the Holocene of the alliance between man and nature, it is no coincidence that the term Urbanocene is proposed, in addition to the well-known Anthropocene, to qualify the break in the balance.
The volume is part of the Future City series of Springer editions, and entrusts a qualified international group of experts with the task of defining the design directions of cities that transform themselves, following not the linear and quantitative guidelines of the energetic and consumerist metropolises, but the circular principles of natural ecosystems, trying to bring the artificiality of an urban system as close as possible to the rules of ecology.
To purchase the volume: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-29466-2