Research
The UrbanLab investigates how resources circulate through cities and territories, how infrastructures and ecosystems organise these flows, and how institutions, communities and more-than-human actors shape urban transitions.
Its research combines conceptual inquiry, resource- and material-flow assessment, spatial data, AI-enabled analysis and research through design.
What Is Urban Metabolism?
Conventional assessments often quantify urban metabolism through material and energy balances. The Urban Metabolism Lab extends these approaches by examining how infrastructures and spatial configurations of the built environment distribute benefits and burdens, how ecosystems sustain urban life, who controls resource systems, and how cities depend on distant territories.
Research connects quantitative resource-use assessments with spatial, socioeconomic, and institutional analysis to understand how infrastructural conditions, ecosystem-level processes, formal and informal consumption practices, and governance arrangements influence urban transitions.
The Lab structures this work through two complementary research axes and one cross-cutting analytical line.
Research Axis 1
Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure Systems
This axis examines how urban infrastructure systems provide and circulate energy, materials and essential services, and how their interdependencies shape resource use, emissions, vulnerability and resilience.
The construction sector is a central testbed, linking material stocks and flows, building lifecycles, urban mining, bio-based materials, and construction and demolition waste.
Research integrates resource- and material-flow assessment, systems modelling, spatial data and AI-enabled analysis to support more circular, climate-resilient and socially responsive infrastructure planning.
SECTORAL TESTBED
Construction
The construction sector provides a critical setting for examining how material stocks, supply chains, energy demand, waste systems and spatial development interact across scales.
Core Questions and Research Themes
Infrastructure Interdependencies and Resilience
Understanding how energy, material, waste and service systems interact, and how disruptions, dependencies and shared vulnerabilities propagate across them.
Circular Construction and Urban Mining
Examining building lifecycles, material stocks, construction and demolition waste, bio-based materials, reuse and resource recovery.
Resource Provisioning and Spatial Inequality
Investigating how infrastructures distribute access, environmental benefits, exposure and vulnerability across territories and communities.
Interconnected Cities and Regions
Analysing exchanges and dependencies between cities, suburban territories, regions and distant resource-provisioning areas.
Infrastructure Governance and Agency
Studying how institutions, policies, technologies, communities and formal and informal actors shape infrastructure transitions.
Knowledge, Scenarios and Decision Support
Exploring how data, models, institutional knowledge and collaborative scenarios can support integrated infrastructure planning and decision-making.
Related Projects
aIST-nexus
A transdisciplinary programme developing an Agency–Information–Spacetime meta-framework and an integrated model-selection system for urban social-ecological metabolism.
Launched in 2022
The Spatial Dimension of Urban Metabolism
Research connecting urban resource flows with public space, landscape infrastructure and vulnerable communities.
Doctoral research completed in 2025
CO-HABITAT
A cartographic and design investigation into animal-inclusive urban planning and non-human agency.
Completed in 2024
Resource-Sensitive and Community-Inclusive Urban Archetypes
Nine urban archetypes translating metabolic evidence into practical spatial-design tools.
2023-2026
Research Axis 2
Ecosystem Services, Green Infrastructure and Human Wellbeing
This axis examines how ecosystems, landscape infrastructures and nature-based solutions support urban resource cycles, climate adaptation, health and wellbeing for human and other-than-human species.
The healthcare sector serves as a strategic testbed, examining how green-infrastructure provision, environmental quality and resource-sensitive service environments can support public health, operational continuity and social resilience.
The axis integrates urban-metabolism analysis with ecosystem-service and natural-capital approaches to assess the functions, benefits and trade-offs of natural and designed systems, and to support integrated planning, policy and design.
SECTORAL TESTBED
Healthcare
Healthcare environments provide a critical setting for investigating how green infrastructure, environmental quality and resource-sensitive design contribute to health, continuity of care and societal resilience.
This axis connects urban-metabolism research with ecological, landscape and health-oriented approaches to understand how natural and designed systems support urban life.
Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital — Connecting ecosystem functions to resource provision, environmental performance and the distribution of benefits.
Nature-Based Solutions — Assessing nature-based interventions within formal settlements, healthcare environments and urban regions.
Green and Landscape Infrastructure — Examining how open spaces, soils, water systems and vegetation support urban metabolism, adaptation and wellbeing.
Climate, Health and Wellbeing — Connecting metabolic assessment with thermal environments, exposure, health inequalities and human wellbeing.
Healthcare Environments and Resilience — Investigating how environmental quality, green infrastructure and resource-sensitive service environments support care, operational continuity and social resilience.
Food Systems and Urban Agriculture — Examining food dependency, urban agriculture and neighbourhood-scale metabolic resilience.
Related Projects
Caring Nature
A Horizon Europe project developing and validating ten solutions to reduce the environmental impact of healthcare while safeguarding care quality and safety.
2024–2026
Green with Grey
Research into the ecological and hydrological potential of desealing industrial sites.
2018–2022
Climate-Positive Design in Landscape Architecture
Research into metabolic and life-cycle thinking in landscape architecture practice, policy and education.
Postdoctoral research in 2025
UMaNS
An integrated framework connecting urban metabolism, ecosystem-service assessment and dynamic modelling.
Doctoral research completed in 2025
ANALYTICAL CAPABILITIES
Geospatial Data Integration
Explainable AI and Spatial Clustering
Remote Sensing and Spatial Statistics
Computational Modelling
Decision-Support Tools
Data Curation and Open Knowledge
TRANSVERSAL PERSPECTIVES
Agency and Governance
Environmental and Spatial Justice
Research Through Design
Multispecies Urban Planning
Methods
The Lab integrates methods that are often separated in urban research, combining resource- and material-flow assessment, systems modelling, spatial data, AI-enabled analysis, participatory inquiry and research through design.
Resource and Material-Flow Assessment
Material-flow analysis, resource accounting, material-stock analysis, life-cycle assessment and infrastructure metabolism.
Systems Modelling
Dynamic and relational modelling, network analysis, scenario development and decision-support frameworks.
Spatial Analysis
GIS, remote sensing, spatial statistics, territorial mapping and landscape analysis.
Data Integration and Artificial Intelligence
Urban data integration, explainable artificial intelligence, spatial clustering, data curation and computational literature analysis.
Conceptual Research
Philosophy of science, systems theory, conceptual engineering and the study of agency.
Participatory Research
Stakeholder engagement, co-design workshops, interviews, household surveys and collaborative scenario building.
Research Through Design
Translating metabolic evidence into spatial strategies, urban archetypes, infrastructure scenarios and landscape interventions.
Start a research conversation
Contact Daniela Perrotti to discuss research enquiries, academic collaboration, data and methodological partnerships, and institutional exchange.
Email Daniela Perrotti