The city is alive: designing cities like living systems | Tuba Kocaturk | TEDxDeakin Uni Melbourne

Quick Overview

Professor Tuba Kocaturk argues that cities must be redesigned to function like living, circular systems, rather than linear ones, by ensuring that 100% of the materials used in construction are reused, repaired, or recycled, contrasting this with the current wastefulness where 97% of materials are burned or landfilled, which ultimately threatens the planet's balance.

Key Points: Kocaturk asserts that the Industrial Revolution changed not just what we build, but how we think, leading to linear systems where waste is discarded. Currently, 97% of global energy is consumed by the built environment, and 93% of the materials we use are burned or sent to landfills, creating massive waste. The goal is to redesign cities to operate like living systems, where resources are perpetually cycled, contrasting with the current linear input/output model. She highlights examples like Paris cafes, where used coffee grounds are collected, and local farmers grow mushrooms with them, which then feed back into local restaurants. The speaker challenges the audience to consider how cities can be designed to ensure that energy, water, materials, and food circulate in closed loops, similar to nature. The ultimate aim is to create circular cities where resources are regenerated, rather than demanding more from the planet than it can replenish.

Context: Professor Tuba Kocaturk presents her vision for sustainable urban development at a TEDx event hosted by Deakin University in Melbourne. Her talk, titled 'The city is alive: designing cities like living systems,' critiques the current linear model of resource consumption in urban environments, drawing parallels between human-built systems and natural ecosystems to advocate for a fully circular city model.

Detailed Analysis

Professor Tuba Kocaturk argues that humanity's current approach to city building, heavily influenced by the Industrial Revolution, is fundamentally linear (take, make, dispose), which is unsustainable. She points out the staggering statistic that 97% of global energy is consumed by the built environment, and 93% of the materials used in daily life (like phones, clothes, cars, and food) end up burned or in landfills, creating waste that the planet cannot absorb. Kocaturk poses two critical questions: How do we connect our cities so that waste from one source becomes food for another, and how do we redesign our systems to work like living systems? She offers concrete examples of circularity in action, such as in Paris, where used coffee grounds are collected and given to local farmers who grow mushrooms, which are then served in local restaurants—a closed loop. She contrasts this with the linear waste stream where 93% of materials used daily are discarded. The fundamental challenge, she states, is that our current systems are designed to create waste, not to maintain balance. She emphasizes that nature has no waste; everything is connected, like a fallen leaf becoming soil that feeds trees that provide shade and oxygen. Kocaturk concludes by asserting that designing for a circular future—where energy, water, materials, and food circulate—is not a distant ideal but a present responsibility, offering the choice to redesign our cities to function as regenerative, living systems.