Photosynthetic Cities: Blue and Green Infrastructure for Resilient Urban Systems

Ecosystemic green and blue infrastructure is vital to urban resilience, health, and biodiversity. With fires raging and water tables depleting, new structural and systemic models for delivering food, water, and biodiversity to our cities are no longer optional. While its benefits are well established, widespread implementation remains hindered by fragmented governance and complex legacy systems. Photosynthetic Cities, convened by the Yale Center for Ecosystems and Architecture (Yale CEA), brings together stakeholders from academia, policy, design, and practice to examine how we move from empirical data to actionable architectural and urban design decisions across multiple spatial scales. 

Future urban models must combine agriculture, decentralized water systems, and urban rewilding to sustain cities within rapidly evolving climate, water, and natural disaster contexts. Localized, resilient networks can produce food, capture and reuse water, and restore urban ecosystems while reducing dependence on fragile centralized systems. These strategies span scales—from urban landscapes and campuses to green roofs and walls and indoor vegetation—addressing interconnected challenges of drought resilience, air quality, urban heat, food systems, biodiversity, and human health. Decades of research and implementation have generated an unprecedented body of evidence. The challenge now is translating research into actionable frameworks connecting scientific evidence, design decisions, performance, and value across buildings, landscapes, and cities. The program is organized around two such efforts: the Integrated Drought Resilience Ontology (IDRO), developed with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) to support drought-resilient urban decision-making, and the Building-Integrated Vegetation (BIV) Toolkit, developed with the American Institute of Architects (AIA) to translate evidence on building-integrated vegetation into performance-based design guidance.

The program culminates with the Ecological Living Network (ELN), which brings together design, science, technology, and local knowledge to develop healthier, more resilient ways of living. Featuring the Ecological Living Module (ELM)—from New York and Nairobi to ELM Brazil—and 50 Cities at 50°C, the program explores responses to extreme heat, water scarcity, and a changing climate. As a research and demonstration platform, ELM provides an instrument for testing integrated green and blue building systems and translating their performance into knowledge for a more resilient built environment.

Agenda:
Photosynthetic Buildings | 3:00pm
Metrics, Performance + Value 

Photosynthetic Cities | 4:30pm
Clean Air, Water, Food + Drought Resilience 

Ecological Living Network (ELN) Program | 6:00pm
Featuring ELM Brazil and 50 Cities at 50°C

Speakers:
Alejandra Acevedo de los Rios, Research Scientist, Yale CEA
Christine Brucker, Director, M Moser
Helen Chartier, Director of Urban Planning and Design, C40 Cities
Christina Ciardullo, Architect + Research Scientist, Yale CEA / AIA Future Forward Grant Award Recipient
Rick Cook, Founding Partner, COOKFOX
Winka Dubbeldam, Assoc. AIA, CEO, SCI-Arc, Founding Principal, Archi-Tectonics
Anna Dyson, Founding Director / Co-Founder, Yale Center for Ecosystems and Architecture
Jefferson Ellinger, Architect + Director Design Computation, UNC Charlotte
Emma Gallo, CEO and Founder, Grace Farms
Steve Garcia, Associate Principal, SHoP
Kayleigh Houde, Principal, Computational Projects Lead, Buro Happold, Chair of MEP 2040
Sarah Kornbluth, Field Researcher, Natural History Museum
Martin Krause, Director, Climate Change Division, UNEP
Phoebe Ledins, G. E. Hutchinson Environmental Research Scientist, Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies and Yale CEA
Andrea Meza, Deputy Executive Secretary, UNCCD
Beka Sturges, Principal, Reed Hilderband
Andreas Theodoridis, Architect + Assistant Professor, NYIT
Fraser Torpy, Director, Plants and Environmental Quality Research Group, University of Technology Sydney
Marc Tsurumaki, Principal and Founding Partner, LTL Architects, Chair MArch, Columbia University
Hind Wildman, Co-Founder, Director of Communications, Yale CEA