In 2013, American political theorist Benjamin R. Barber convincingly argued that contemporary cities are better poised than nations to solve global problems. According to Barber, this is also true for the responses to climate change: ‘Where states can be said to have done the least, cities have done the most.’
Smart cities are not merely for people and robots. Due to climate change and biodiversity decline, the combination of the physical and the digital is increasingly related to the needs of all species. Combining the natural and built worlds can be assisted by biotechnology, for instance, the use of bioreactors as a source of energy and by the smart application of landscape data in urban design, for instance, by means of biodigital twins or augmented reality. It shifts our perspective and poses the most critical and intriguing challenge of a smart living environment—how to adopt a life-centred rather than human-centred approach.
