In the Future We Will Design With Nature
Ludvig Liljeqvist
Global Sustainability Insights and Innovation Leader, IKEA Retail (Ingka Group)
“The moment humans leave, nature will come back to cities. It will break the concrete and rewild our urban spaces,” Ludvig says. Although we’ve built our cities “by fighting nature, we cannot ‘safe-proof’ them against extreme weather events.” Ludvig believes the day will come when we collectively stop fighting nature and instead embrace it. And that day will create a paradigm shift in the way we approach urban living. “We need to invite nature in. Learn from it and design with it.”
Learning that urban life has become less important and that people want to live in homes that are cleaner, greener, and airier, Ludvig feels optimistic. In this trend he sees the possible manifestation of a solarpunk future, which envisions what a sustainable civilization looks like, living in harmony with nature. It has inspired a lot of Ludvig’s work. Working with insights and foresight, he is on a mission to create a “radically optimistic people- and planet-positive future.” In the volatile and uncertain world that we live in, sustaining a positive future vision requires radical collective imagination and action.
The 2021 Climate Action Research, on which Ludvig has also been working, indicates that 87% of people surveyed are willing to take action to tackle climate change. This willingness, together with a positive vision of the future, may shift us into acting more like nature – “giving back more than we take. That suggests a future that is regenerative.”
In this future, humans are part of co-developing planetary systems, integral urban systems will need to become circular and regenerative by design. “Decentralised energy production, water supply networks, food production and distribution: essentially we will need to organise ourselves more locally, to live in smaller communities.”
An adventurer and a believer that “life gets just better”, as the father of “three small teachers”, he believes that human imagination, storytelling, have helped humans make leaps in the past towards a better future and will help do so for future generations.