Glossary

Adaptive capacity refers to the capability of a system, institution, person or other organism to adjust to potential damage, effect or impact caused by climate change, to take advantage of opportunities, or to respond to consequences.¹

[1] This definition builds on definitions used in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (AR5) (Geneva: IPCC, 2014) and the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Current States and Trends (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2005).

Adaptive reuse is the transformation of ageing or underutilised assets for reuse or new uses.¹ In addition to preserving heritage, adaptive reuse can help cities cut carbon emissions, achieve cost savings and retain the identity of spaces while sensitively accommodating to changing uses.

[1] World Economic Forum, Adaptive Reuse of Assets Model Policy (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2024).

Biomimicry is the emulation of nature to solve human problems.¹ It argues that nature's evolution has created time-tested solutions that can inspire sustainable design solutions.²

[1] The Biomimicry Institute, "What is Biomimicry?", n.d.

[2] Moheb Sabry Aziz and Amr Y. El Sherif, “Biomimicry as an Approach for Bio-Inspired Structure with the Aid of Computation”, Alexandria Engineering Journal 55.1 (2016): 707–14.

Biophilia refers to the principle of natural affinity between humans and nature.¹ Biophilic design in the built environment fosters this relationship by integrating natural elements and processes into urban spaces.² It is associated with benefits such as improved human health, well-being and productivity.

[1] Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia, 1st ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).

[2] Miles Richardson and Carly W. Butler, “Nature Connectedness and Biophilic Design”, Building Research & Information 50.1-2 (2022): 36–42.

Climate mitigation seeks to limit greenhouse gas emissions and reduce current levels by improving greenhouse gas sinks,¹ while climate adaptation aims to enhance adaptive capacity to respond to the consequences of climate change or to take advantage of potential opportunities.²

[1] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “Annex I: Glossary”, in Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change, ed. Priyadarshi R. Shukla et al., Working Group III Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 1793–1820.

[2] IPCC, “Annex II: Glossary”, in Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, ed. Hans-Otto Pörtner et al., Working Group II Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 2897–2930.

Popularised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report (AR3), co-benefits refer to the planned non-climate benefits arising from greenhouse gas mitigation efforts.¹ A co-benefits approach to planning, recognising that mutualistic relationships exist between various domains, utilises these synergies such that a single policy or action maximises shared benefits across these domains.

[1] IPCC, Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report (AR3) (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Ecosystem services refer to the benefits or functions that the natural environment provides to people. In cities, ecosystems services are key to designing nature-based solutions that can complement and enhance the resilience of traditional grey infrastructure. They bring about ecological, social and economic benefits. For example, urban vegetation can lower surface air temperatures through shading and evapotranspiration. Likewise, green walls and trees that shade buildings can reduce building heat loads and energy consumption from cooling.¹

[1] Timon McPhearson et al., “A Social-Ecological-Technological Systems Framework for Urban Ecosystem Services”, One Earth 5.5 (2022): 505–18.

Liveability reflects the city's ability to balance and achieve a competitive economy, high quality of life and sustainable environment at the same time.¹ Ensuring liveability in the regenerative city requires balancing the demands of development with ecosystem health, sustaining the diversity, density and connectivity of both the built and natural environments. Liveability is one of the three outcomes of the regenerative city.

[1] Centre for Liveable Cities, Building Liveable and Sustainable Cities: A Framework for the Future (Singapore: Centre for Liveable Cities, 2025).

Drawing from the term's origins in biology, living systems are characterised by three core properties: metabolism (the ability to process energy and resources), self-reproduction and mutability. Likewise, cities can be understood as complex living systems composed of interdependent ecological, social and built subsystems. These urban systems interact to produce desirable outcomes, dynamically reorganising and adapting over time.¹

[1] Bernd-Olaf Küppers, “Definition of Living Systems”, in Molecular Theory of Evolution: Outline of a Physico-Chemical Theory of the Origin of Life (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 1983), 7–10.

Planetary boundaries elucidate the limits for human pressure on nine earth processes that are critical to maintaining a “safe operating space for humanity”. These earth processes are climate change, biosphere integrity, land-system change, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows, ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol loading, stratospheric ozone depletion and novel entities (human-made chemicals, plastics, etc.). The Planetary Health Check 2025 reported that seven out of the nine planetary boundaries have been breached; only aerosol loading and stratospheric ozone depletion remain within safe levels.¹

[1] Earth Commission, "Planetary Health Check: 7 of 9 boundaries breached", 24 September 2025.

Taking inspiration from Pamela Mang and Bill Reed's concept of “operational capacity” for regenerative development, which refers to the ability of a system to self-organise, adapt and evolve,¹ regenerative capacity measures the synergies between the city's urban built and natural environments, advancing a balanced assessment of the urban ecosystem's ability to bring holistic benefits. It comprises three fundamental tenets: density, diversity and connectivity, with each representing a systems-based approach to holistic planning for the urban ecosystem.

[1] Pamela Mang and Bill Reed, “Regenerative Development and Design”, in Sustainable Built Environments, ed. Vivian Loftness and Dagmar Haase (New York: Springer, 2013).

The regenerative city is one that goes beyond sustainability—which strives to reduce harm—to optimise co-benefits across liveability, resilience and resource optimisation outcomes. It refers to the city as a complex and dynamic urban–natural environment where human, ecological and technological systems co-evolve to generate multiple co-benefits. In a climate-changed and resource-constrained world, a regenerative city renews and adapts to turn interdependencies into opportunities.

Resilience refers to the ability of a city's people, communities, institutions, businesses and systems to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from and more successfully adapt to adverse events. A regenerative city builds resilience across reinforcing dimensions: climate, social, environmental and resource, forming one of the three outcomes of the regenerative city.

Resource optimisation shows the degree to which material, food, carbon, water and land are used and kept in continuous circulation to minimise extraction, waste and environmental degradation. For the regenerative city, resource optimisation strives for efficiency and the creation of an integrated metabolic system, where the lifespans of resources in circulation are prolonged, and more is created with less.

Sponge city is a concept frequently used in planning to describe the adoption of blue-green infrastructure and nature-based drainage systems to tackle urban stormwater. In addition to reducing flood risk, this can generate co-benefits of improved water quality, reduced urban heat and enhanced biodiversity, contributing to greater liveability and resilience.¹

[1] Gamze Kazancı, Aliye Ahu Gülümser and João Pedro Costa, “Sponge City Concepts in Contemporary Literature: Trends, Thematic Clusters and Challenges for Sustainable Urban Water Management”, Urban Water Journal 23.2 (2026): 261–80.

Sustainable development broadly refers to development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.¹ In particular, sustainable urban development seeks to further progress while minimising activities that are harmful to residents and the environment, thereby mitigating the climate and environmental damage caused by development.²

[1] World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (Brundtland Report) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).

[2] United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, n.d.

A systems-based approach examines how components within a system interact and influence one another to produce emergent behaviours and outcomes.¹ In urban systems, it examines how subsystems interact through feedback loops and identifies leverage points where integrated interventions can restore ecological functions, strengthen resilience and improve long-term urban well-being.^2,3

[1] Nirmal Kishnani and Wong Mun Summ, “Systems, Patterns, Place: A Novel Framework for Urban Transformations”, in Urban Solutions 27 (Singapore: Centre for Liveable Cities, 2025), 74–81.

[2] Jamie P. Monat and Thomas F. Gannon, “Applying Systems Thinking to Engineering and Design”, Systems 6.3 (2018): 34.

[3] Timothy Beatley, Biophilic Cities: Integrating Nature into Urban Design and Planning (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2011).

Trade-offs refers to situations where pursuing one option or outcome comes at the cost of another, requiring decision-makers to forgo or even accept the deterioration of alternative options.¹ While trade-offs have conventionally been used as an approach to assess the ability of actions to deliver outcomes, regenerative urban development argues that they must be accompanied by co-benefits to ensure that decisions are not only informed by a balance between risk and reward, but an optimisation of potential.

[1] Caroline Howe et al., “Creating Win-Wins from Trade-Offs? Ecosystem Services for Human Well-Being: A Meta-Analysis of Ecosystem Service Trade-Offs and Synergies in the Real World”, Global Environmental Change 28 (2014): 263–75.

The urban heat island effect is a phenomenon where densely built areas experience higher air temperatures than less developed rural areas.¹ The additional warming caused by urbanisation is more palpable at night when urban structures release the solar radiation that is trapped in the day. The urban heat island effect is exacerbated by a lack of vegetated surfaces which reduce heat absorption in the day.

[1] Ang Qing, “Heat and the City: High-Rise Areas Get Almost Twice as Hot as Low-Rise Residential Areas”, The Straits Times, 7 November 2022.

With metabolism referred to as the set of chemical processes which convert food into energy required for growth, maintenance and survival for living organisms, urban metabolism is the set of processes and factors that influence cities' evolving structure and function. Specifically, it analyses cities' flow of resources (materials, water and energy) and emissions, explicating varied socio-technical and socio-ecological relationships in the urban environment.¹

[1] Jean-Baptiste Bahers et al., “The Place of Space in Urban Metabolism Research: Towards a Spatial Turn? A Review and Future Agenda”, Landscape and Urban Planning 221 (2022): 104376.

An urban-natural environment refers to an ecosystem where urban and natural environments are deeply integrated with each other such that there are mutualistic relationships between the two environments.¹ In such an ecosystem, urban environments benefit from ecosystem services from the natural environment, while natural environments benefit from human stewardship.² 

[1] Liu Jianguo et al., “Coupled Human and Natural Systems”, AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment 36.8 (2007): 639–49.

[2] Duncan T. Patten, “The Role of Ecological Wisdom in Managing for Sustainable Interdependent Urban and Natural Ecosystems”, Landscape and Urban Planning 155 (2016): 3–10.