A Patterned City
This is the website for Making Urban Ecologies Legible: A Conversational Interface for Environmental Time, a research project at Lancaster University’s partner institutes at Beijing Jiaotong University, Weihai, China and Sunway University, Malaysia.
The project will prototype a highly accessible environmental information system that captures fine-grained time-series environmental data in urban settings. Through live and archival data captured from the canopy of an individual tree, users will be able to converse with an urban landscape through natural language and creative audiovisual imagery. They will be able to explore patterns of urban environmental and ecological activity (from birdsong and bat calls to machinery and traffic) and physical processes (from daily cycles to lunar and seasonal cycles of light, darkness, temperature, humidity, air quality).
The system will make environmental data meaningful and legible to a broad audience—from citizens and non-specialists to urban designers, ecologists, and policy makers. It will help citizens, researchers, and practitioners to attune to urban ecological processes and their temporal patterns. This expanded awareness will support environmental stewardship, facilitate nature-inclusive urban design, and aid advocacy and green transition initiatives, while creating an exemplar of international standing for both research and impact.
Making Urban Ecologies Legible will deliver a proof-of-concept prototype and develop an international network between Lancaster University (UK), Beijing Jiaotong University Weihai (China), and Sunway University (Malaysia). It builds upon foundations developed through several earlier projects, including Sonorous Landscapes: Using sound and creative design methods to capture and communicate biodiversity in an urban forest (2024–25); Slough Digital Urban Forest (2019 [ongoing]); Sensing the luminous night: Using creative engagement practices and unattended light sensors to change perceptions of light pollution and the value of darkness in an area of outstanding natural beauty (2023–25); Re-wilding the Night: Co-designing new engagements with urban darkness (2022–24); and Sensing the Luminous Night: Innovations in capturing and communicating observations of light pollution in an area of natural beauty (2021–22).
The project responds to the New Urban Agenda regarding citizen-centric digital governance tools and open data systems to broaden participation and enable civic responsibility by prioritising transparent, accessible data about local environmental conditions (air quality, light pollution, biodiversity, temperature, humidity) in a planetary context.
Making Urban Ecologies Legible is funded by the Global Advancement Fund (Lancaster University)
Foundational work funded by:
