Let Nature Lead: A New Approach to Urban Development
2025 CTBUH From the Ground Up Conference
The 2025 CTBUH “From the Ground Up” Conference in Toronto concluded with a compelling call to action: we need to fundamentally change our approach to urban development, especially in the design of tall buildings. During an engaging panel discussion, Jamie Miller and Ben Shepherd from Atelier Ten, along with other thought leaders, argued that the time for designing cities in defiance of nature is over.
For decades, we’ve treated our cities as human-made bubbles, resulting in buried rivers and isolated towers competing for finite resources. The crises we face today—crippling flooding, urban overheating, and failing infrastructure—are proof that this model is unsustainable. Our cities are rigid when they need to be adaptive, extractive when they must be regenerative, and blind to the profound benefits nature offers: vital ecological services, enhanced human well-being through biophilic design, and powerful biomimetic innovation.
If we want urban resilience, we must rethink our towers and our cities from the ground up.
A more effective path begins with collaboration—not just between traditional disciplines, but critically, with the land itself. Nature has perfected efficiency and adaptability over eons; its systems offer a masterclass we must finally embrace rather than resist.
Imagine a tall building—or an entire urban district—that functions more like a forest: interconnected, sharing resources, energy, and emergency pathways. By aligning our design with natural flows, we can move from simply occupying space to actively restoring it. This approach enables us to integrate natural water management, infuse truly biophilic spaces into every level, and use biomimicry to shape high-performing, regenerative structures.
Reimagining cities reveals an uncomfortable truth: we spend enormous time, energy, and resources resisting nature rather than working with it. If abandoned, cities would be quickly reclaimed by nature, proving our efforts to control the environment are both temporary and costly. Instead, we can design cities that embrace natural forces, where urban development integrates ecological restoration and Indigenous knowledge to create more adaptive, regenerative spaces.
This is fundamentally a mindset shift. Cities that view nature as a competitor will inevitably face escalating challenges. The ones that learn to collaborate—internally and with the environment—will lead the way forward. And that future is already taking shape.
As Jamie Miller powerfully articulated:
“The tall structures that I celebrate have yet to be built. Those that are manufactured with carbon. Those that create their own solar collectors using water based chemistry. Those that by their very nature, are circular and produce their own biomass for future development. Those that dissipate storms. Regulate their temperatures. Produce oxygen. Clean the air. All are yet to be built, by us, but we are on a mission to see this reality in our lifetimes.”
The future of urban resilience hinges on our ability to pivot from control to collaboration. The next generation of exceptional tall buildings will not just withstand the environment; they will actively contribute to it. Is your firm ready to design the forest, not the fortress?