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Biophilic City - Birmingham's Radical Urban Transformation

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Biophilic City - Birmingham's Radical Urban Transformation

In an inspiring conversation with the Journal of Biophilic Design, Nick Grayson, Birmingham's former climate change and sustainability manager, reveals how cities can revolutionise urban living by putting nature at the heart of decision-making.

Nick's journey from a curious child fascinated by understanding "how all this works" to becoming a pioneering urban transformation expert is a testament to the power of vision and persistent innovation. His most powerful message resonates clearly: "Cities are themselves generating 80% of global emissions and 75 to 80% of nature loss around the world."

The turning point came when Nick realised that urban spaces needed a fundamental mindset shift. "Nature isn't something we add on or allow to exist in cities," he explains. "We need to recognize how wholly dependent we are on it, both at an individual and global scale."

Birmingham's transformation became a global blueprint for urban regeneration. Nick's shorthand for a biophilic city is deceptively simple yet profound: "Cities that put nature at the heart of their decision making."

READ ON AND LISTEN… plus Nick has given us many references, books and website to follow up with.

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How can Biophilic Design help reverse Climate Change?

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How can Biophilic Design help reverse Climate Change?

In the urgent battle against climate change, an unexpected hero is emerging: biophilic design. Far more than a trendy architectural concept, it represents a radical reimagining of how we interact with our built environment. We speak with Tom Dolan, a senior research fellow at UCL and leading voice in sustainable infrastructure.

"We're not just adding plants to buildings," Tom explains. "We're talking about a complete transformation of how we design our cities, infrastructure, and living spaces." This approach goes beyond mere aesthetics, offering a comprehensive solution to some of our most pressing environmental challenges.At its core, biophilic design recognizes that humans are intrinsically connected to natural systems. It's an approach that sees buildings and urban spaces not as isolated structures, but as living, breathing ecosystems that can actively contribute to environmental healing.

Take water management, for instance. Traditional urban design channels water away as quickly as possible, creating flood risks and environmental stress. Biophilic design reimagines this, using green infrastructure to slow water movement, improve quality, and create multifunctional urban spaces. "We can capture water, slow its movement through urban landscapes, and create spaces that are both functional and beautiful," Tom argues.

The potential impacts are profound. Buildings designed with biophilic principles could become self-regulating systems that require minimal external energy for heating and cooling. Imagine schools and hospitals where the building itself becomes a learning tool – demonstrating how architecture can work in harmony with natural systems.

This isn't just environmental idealism. There's a compelling economic argument too. Drawing on the "donut economics" framework, Tom highlights how biophilic design can create multiple value streams. A single tree, for example, provides services that would cost thousands to replicate artificially – from air purification to carbon sequestration, from temperature regulation to mental health benefits. READ ON AND WATCH THE PODCAST..

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How our Brains respond to Biophilic Design

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How our Brains respond to Biophilic Design

In a world increasingly disconnected from nature, the principles of biophilic design offer a powerful antidote.

Chintamani Bird, an Australian designer committed to biophilic design, shared her insights on how Biophilic Design can heal both people and the planet. She emphasizes that biophilic design has a profound impact on the brain, reducing stress, improving cognitive function, activating the parasympathetic nervous system, and enhancing overall mood and well-being.

As the Journal of Biophilic Design expands to Australia in 2025, this is the first in a series of interviews with leading names in Biophilic Designers from that side of the globe and who champion the transformative potential of this design philosophy.

At the heart of Biophilic Design is the recognition that humans have an innate need to connect with the natural world. "Biophilic design has the opportunity to heal and heal through biodiversity, heal the soil, heal the environment, heal communities," Chintamani emphasized.

Listen and Read on...

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Rebalance Earth - Enabling a world worth living in. Creating a Nature Positive Economy

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Rebalance Earth - Enabling a world worth living in. Creating a Nature Positive Economy

Robert Gardner is CEO and Co-Founder of Rebalance Earth. With over 20 years of experience in the financial industry, he has a unique expertise in sustainability, pensions, and wealth management and believes that money can be a force for good.

Rebalance Earth, is a fund manager that redirects the flow of private capital to protect and restore Nature.  Their mission is to drive the transition to a nature-based economy by enabling the flow of private capital to protect and restore nature. Rebalance Earth achieves this by creating opportunities for investors to achieve sustainable financial returns from projects to restore Nature.

Robert is passionate about the idea of “natural capital”.  He believes that investment in the environment shouldn’t simply be about climate change but should take a broader approach.  He sees a future in which biophilia is prominent and discussion of environment-conscious investment should include reduced biodiversity loss, rewilding, and all aspects of being in tune with nature.

Robert sees nature as the most valuable asset class on the planet. It provides everything from clean air to carbon capture and biodiversity; not forgetting that a balanced ecosystem is essential to create pollination and soil fertility for our food.

The investment community currently operates an extractive financial model that has been using all of nature's resources for free, not valuing them and, worse than that, destroying them.  Rebalance Earth is taking steps to build and propagate a more sustainable, biophilic approach.

In this podcast, Robert talks about how… READ ON and LISTEN to the PODCAST

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New Natural History GCSE – so we are not the Last Page of the Book of Earth

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New Natural History GCSE – so we are not the Last Page of the Book of Earth

With such a depletion of wildlife in the UK alone, with so many schools, cities, towns, and housing estates being built so far removed from our natural world how on earth does the next generation stand a chance to learn about the natural world and be sympathetic to it?

 At the same time, we also are demanding literally the earth from our natural world, and the way we extract from the natural world is getting more intensive and damaging.  As we move further away from it how do we fill that nature gap in society? We speak with Environmentalist, Producer and Writer Mary Colwell who has campaigned and devised a NEW Natural History GCSE designed to help bridge this chasm, helping put nature and the wonderment and fascination of nature into education.

“Nature is for everyone, it is there for YOU to engage with, that’s why putting it into the school system is important, making it open access and free to all, for everyone to engage with. We know from the COPs recently that we are looking at a very difficult time ahead, and those young people will have to live in this difficult time, and if they are going to make the right decisions for themselves, people and the planet, they need to be more knowledgeable, more engaged and more connected to this planet we live on.”

 Read and Listen on…

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Nature on Film - From David Attenborough and the BBC to Termite Mounds!

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Nature on Film - From David Attenborough and the BBC to Termite Mounds!

Biophilia is more than plants, light and air, it’s also about surrounding ourselves with living beings and our living natural world. If we think about it, E.O.Wilson’s seminal book, Biophilia celebrates all aspects of our living planet and is a call for that direct connection with nature. Wilson’s book examines our inherent connection to living species, the fascination of life, and how other living societal systems can inform our own. In fact, his lifelong interest in ant colonies emphasises this. Creating those moments of intimacy with nature has a really important place in our modern world where there is a disconnect with getting out there.

In this wonderful podcast, we speak with Michael Potts, who has spent more than 30 years as a wildlife cameraman, mostly for the BBC in more than 50 countries worldwide on major series including working alongside David Attenborough filming Life of Birds, The Life of Mammals and many programmes in the Natural World series. We discuss the importance of nature connection, biomimicry, why we need to introduce and educate the next generation, and also how audio-visual connection to nature through our TVs and devices is a positive thing and how we could take this one step further and introduce it into our built environment. “If you see something and understand it, then you care about it, then you might do something to protect it and encourage other people to do the same.” The messaging, inspiration and education you experience through wildlife films inspire people, and footage of birds in flight for instance has a calming effect as well.

Michael regales us with tales of animals, where he has filmed birds of paradise in New Guinea, Grizzly bears in Alaska, Termites in Namibia, Caribou migration, Polar Bears and more. He has spent many hours, up close and personal, feeling the heartbeat of a bird as it sits in his hand, feeling the strength of it, studying the intricacies of plumage which adapted to that way of life, their piercing eyes, incisive bills which continue to fascinate him: “every species is so special, they are all so different, so supremely adapted to where they live.”

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Designing Climate Change Resilience

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Designing Climate Change Resilience

Nature is our key to solving the climate crisis, if we reconnect people with nature, bring nature and natural elements closer to people then everything is more joined up. Better decisions will be made. Dom Higgins, head of Health and Education for the Wildlife Trusts. We speak about Nature connectedness, biodiversity, purpose, people, place, Cone Snails and the new Natural History GCSE… among other things. We need to give nature a chance, we might be too late to prevent climate change, but we can mitigate against the challenges such as cooling cities, carbon sinks, cleaning our air, and ecosystems that can mitigate the issues. We need people to take action, so we need to hear it on the Stock Exchange, Factories, taxis, it should be the business of everybody.

We talk about how we need active environments, and how it goes back to when we were hunter-gatherers. If you remove people inside and then we remain stationary, then we stress. We should be outside, away from artificial lights and all the accoutrements of the modern-day office (unless it has biophilic design woven into its very fabric). Take anyone away from connecting with nature and we get chronic stress. The disconnection detrimentally affects us physically and mentally.

We discuss this nature-connectedness, that feeling of understanding what is going on in the world, that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. We need that daily thought, that sense of knowing that everything has a place, and is connected back to everything else. This is our life-support system essentially. If we don’t design with that sense at our core, then our planet and our health are doomed. If you don’t have that feeling, that sense of connectedness with nature innate within you, then the decisions being made around the world are skewed, everything from creating fair and sustainable employment to the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. It has consequences. And not good ones.

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Chris Packham - Why we need to build with Nature in Mind

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Chris Packham - Why we need to build with Nature in Mind

With our countryside fast vanishing under concrete, there is much we can do to mitigate the loss by placing the natural world at the heart of development and planning. “Housing developments and houses themselves should be designed to provide space for both wildlife and people” – The Wildlife Trusts. But how do we get to this mindset? We were very excited to be joined by Chris Packham, naturalist, television presenter, writer, photographer, conservationist, campaigner and filmmaker. A very much respected presenter of BBC’s BAFTA Award-winning Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Winterwatch series.

In our discussion, we talk about Biophilic Design and he makes an urgent call about why we need to bring nature into our built environment. “If we are not in contact with nature, how are we ever going to learn to love or recognise its true value.”

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From Veterinary Science to a Wellbeing Biophilic Economy

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From Veterinary Science to a Wellbeing Biophilic Economy

Fascinating and positive conversation with Glen Cousquer, covering biology, philosophy and the concept of the self, we talk conservation medicine, experiential education including getting outdoors, and exploring the concept of listening not only for human relationships but also listening to the living world around us. He is a qualified Vet, but after realising how there were underlying issues affecting different eco systems he moved away from the traditional veterinary model into developing a more holistic approach to health and welfare concerns…

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