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Zurich/Singapore – The ETH Zurich and three Singapore universities are researching sustainable development strategies for cities and their surrounding regions. Current projects are looking at green buildings, new recycling technologies, and food systems in metropolitan areas.

The Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) and three universities in Singapore – the National University of Singapore, the Nanyang Technological University and the Singapore University of Technology and Design – are participating in an interdisciplinary project to research how global cities can achieve sustainable growth. The collaborative venture called Future Cities Lab Global (FCL) launched on 1 December 2020, according to a statement. It comes on the back of the successfully completed Future Cities Laboratory, a 10-year research initiative of the Singapore-ETH Centre.

The new programme aims to research the global challenges posed by increasing urbanisation, with the growth of existing cities and the emergence of new ones. This in light of figures from the United Nations that suggest two thirds of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050.

“The ecological and economic benefits of high-​density, low-​footprint cities are being outweighed by urban sprawl in the regions around and between those cities,” explained Stephen Cairns, FCL Global’s co-​director and ETH architecture professor in Singapore. “Our capacity to mitigate climate change in the coming century will hinge on how well these contrasting forms of urbanisation are planned.”

A range of projects are in the pipeline, according to the ETH. Currently, the researchers are working on projects covering green buildings and neighbourhoods in densely populated areas and new technologies for recycling building materials. They are also developing solutions to aid cities and surrounding regions that are distressed or at risk of flooding, as well as ways to achieve sustainable food systems across cities and surrounding regions.