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What if Lab: the giving city

What if... cities gave back?

Strijp-S — © Sweco

A regenerative city works towards creating a healthy and sustainable environment by restoring and enhancing natural resources and ecosystems. How can we design streets, neighbourhoods, and communities that can improve themselves? In Sweco's What if Lab we explore that question.

The giving city

More and more people are moving to cities. Currently, 55 per cent of the world’s population lives in urban areas. By 2050, this is expected to be nearly 70 per cent. This shift is rapidly changing the world and bringing new challenges that affect our quality of life. If we want a sustainable and social future for cities, we need to rethink how we organise, build, and inhabit urban environments. Sweco believes that the city of the future is one that gives back; by offering more than it asks for, allowing humans and nature to live in harmony together. How do we design that city together?

Sweco's What if Lab

For the fourth time Sweco organizes this design challenge in collaboration with What if Lab, a program of the Dutch Design Foundation. Together with creative design studios, we explore unique solutions for our future society.

Volle Grond, Fides Lapidaire and Studio Kornelia Dimitrova x Massif Architects, together with experts from architectural and engineering consultancy Sweco, have taken on this unique design challenge. The results are presented during Dutch Design Week.

About Sweco

Sweco plans and designs the sustainable communities and cities of the future. Together with our clients and the collective knowledge of our 22,000 architects, engineers and other experts, we co-create solutions to address urbanisation, capture the power of digitalisation, and make our societies more sustainable. Sweco is Europe’s leading engineering and architecture consultancy.