Half of humanity—3.5 billion people—live in cities today, yet the digital technologies that run smart cities largely ignore the plants, animals, and microorganisms that share those spaces. This fellowship will test whether networked sensors, AI, and data visualisation can help design cities that work for all their inhabitants, not just humans. Current smart city innovations—real-time bus information, smart bins, smart lighting—are sold as environmental and social goods, but they rarely account for how human and non-human life are interdependent in urban space. The problem is that ignoring these relationships contributes to biodiversity decline as cities expand. By 2050, 68% of the world’s population will live in urban areas, making this gap increasingly urgent. The research will run three living labs—real-world test sites in community gardens, buildings, and waterways—where researchers co-design prototypes with community, business, and policy partners. If successful, the project could produce practical guidelines for industry and policy, open-source toolkits and datasets, and new digital prototypes that embed ecological thinking into urban infrastructure. The work is applied and design-focused, not fundamental science: its direct aim is to change how cities are planned and built, making them more inclusive and sustainable for all species.
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Half of humanity - 3.5 billion people - lives in cities today and 68% of the world's population is projected to live in urban areas by 2050. This increase in urbanisation is contributing to biodiversity decline worldwide due to changing land use. At the same time, digital technologies are changing our cities. Innovations such as real-time bus information, smart rubbish bins, smart parking, and smart street lighting are often referred to as the smart city, and optimistically promised as a social and environmental good. But these interventions generally fail to take into account the ways in which human and non-human inhabitants of cities (such as plants, animals, micro-organisms, as well as sensors) are inter-related and interdependent in urban space. The MoSaIC: More-than-Human Sustainable and Inclusive Smart Cities fellowship will investigate the design of more inclusive, sustainable and flourishing smart cities. It will do this by exploring how digital technologies such as networked sensors, AI, and data visualisation approaches can help us plan and design smart cities for all their inhabitants - human as well as other species. The research will be undertaken in three living labs, which are real world testbeds for co-creating research and innovation in public-private-people partnerships. These will take place in three types of site: urban community gardens, buildings, and waterways. In these living labs we will co-design new prototypes that demonstrate how digital technologies can enable sustainable, more-than-human smart cities in practice and policy. We will use inclusive and creative co-design methods, working in close collaboration with key community, business, and policy partners to include the perspectives of human and non-human inhabitants. We will produce the following outputs from the research: new methods for decentering the human in smart cities, new digital and data visualisation prototypes, new artworks and a book, open source toolkit and data sets, practical guidelines for designing more-than-human smart cities in for industry, policy and with communities, an interdisciplinary workshop and cross-sector symposium for the general public. We will also conduct public engagement and dissemination activities that include art commissions and an exhibition that will help to deliver a transformational agenda to the wider public and create impact at scale.
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