Advances in Ecological Futures and Urban Analytics: Materials, Biophilia, and AI in Built Environments

This definitive volume charts a critical paradigm shift in contemporary design and planning: the discipline’s center of gravity is moving away from the isolated architectural object and toward the complex systems that produce, regulate, and ultimately outlive it. Structured not as a static thematic survey, but as a sequential intellectual journey, the book traces the displacement of traditional architectural authorship. It begins at the familiar scale of building performance, reopening the raw material ecology of stiffness control, industrial tailings, and nanotechnology, before moving outside the envelope to confront ecosystem services, ecofeminism, and decentralized infrastructure. The volume then dives into the digital frontier, interrogating the ethical deployment of machine learning, digital twins, and AI-driven urban generation. It culminates on the ground of civic reality, where adaptive reuse, refugee integration, and infrastructural justice prove that the most consequential design choices are made through governance and policy, not form. Rejecting the format of a simplistic how-to manual, this book serves as a vital diagnostic map of where the built environment's hardest questions are being asked. It is an essential resource for architects, urban planners, systems engineers, and policymakers who recognize that true sustainability requires stepping outside disciplinary boundaries to reclaim the built environment through radical collaboration.