Mosaic: More-than-Human Sustainable and Inclusive Smart Cities

Mosaic is a four-year programme of collaborative, interdisciplinary, and cross-sectoral research and innovation that will deliver a step‑change in how we design, plan and build our cities for thriving multispecies cohabitation. Funded through a £1.6 million UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship awarded to Dr Sara Heitlinger, the research is investigating large‑scale transformation of smart cities from a human-centered perspective, to a more‑than‑human one. A more‑than‑human perspective of cities is one that acknowledges and designs for the interrelations between humans and non‑human others – including plants, animals, bacteria, as well as water, air and sensors – in urban space. This transformation is crucial given that 68% of the global population will live in urban areas by 2050, significantly impacting biodiversity. But current smart city initiatives focus on efficiency gains that privilege human needs. The broader ecological context and citizens’ social practices are often overlooked. Mosaic proposes that a human‑centric view is unsustainable given unprecedented species extinction rates and their impact on human and non-human communities.