Comparative Ecology of Cities

Understanding Urban Ecosystems

Cities are complex socio-ecological systems in which the spatial arrangement of buildings, streets, green spaces, and waterways shapes the flows of energy, materials, and people.

Building upon the pattern–process–function relationships, the Comparative Ecology of Cities project aims to investigate how urban form influences social and ecological functions, and to translate these insights into evidence-based strategies for urban policy and design.

Project Overview

The Comparative Ecology of Cities project is a research initiative under the Future Cities Laboratory at the Singapore-ETH Centre, bringing together an interdisciplinary team spanning ecology, environmental engineering, urban planning, and socio-economic research.

Using remote sensing and spatial datasets to characterise the urban form of more than 100 cities, the project combines socio-ecological theory, climate and flood modelling, and machine learning to quantify the impacts of urban form across five domains, namely biodiversity, climate and energy, flooding, health, and socioeconomics. The project reveals universal principles while recognising the unique characteristics of each urban environment, and suggests place-based strategies to support sustainable urban development.

Publications

Investigating the influence of urban morphology on pluvial flooding: Insights from urban catchments in England (UK)

Science of The Total Environment, 2024

Modeling the effect of trees on energy demand for indoor cooling and dehumidification across cities and climates

Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 2025

Residential tree canopy configuration and mortality in 6 million Swiss adults: a longitudinal study

The Lancet Planetary Health, 2025

Influence of urban form and function on daytime-nighttime population differences and hazard risk assessments

npj Urban Sustainability, 2025

The influence of urban morphological changes on pluvial flooding during urban expansion

Sustainable Cities and Society, 2025

People

Principal Investigators

Prof. Tan Puay Yok

Prof. Tan Puay Yok is Professor in the Department of Architecture, College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore. He leads the Landscape Studies cluster and the Urban Ecology Lab. Trained in horticulture and plant physiology, his research examines the science, policy and practice of urban greening and built-environment ecology to improve environmental quality and societal well-being.

Prof. Paolo Burlando

Prof. Paolo Burlando is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at ETH Zurich. His research centres on water-resources planning and management, rainfall field analysis, hydrologic extremes forecasting, global change, water resources in mountainous regions, and hydrology and ecology interactions in mountain floodplains.

Prof. Simone Fatichi

Prof. Simone Fatichi is Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore. His research covers hydrology, biogeosciences, and climate change-related topics addressing questions associated to global change and its impacts on vegetation functioning, water and soil resources, carbon cycle, and ecosystem services in natural and urban environments.

Project Team Members

Prof. Zhang Ye

Prof. Zhang Ye is Associate Professor and Assistant Dean (International Relations) at the School of Architecture, Tsinghua University. His research explores urban form, social and economic activities, and the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to human–environment interactions in urban regeneration.

Prof. Yun Hye Hwang

Prof. Yun Hye Hwang is Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture, College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on landscape demands in Asian equatorial cities, sustainable landscape management, multifunctional urban green spaces, and ecological design and planning in high-density urban contexts.

Dr. Chi Dengkai

Dr. Chi Dengkai is Postdoctoral Researcher and module coordinator at the Future Cities Laboratory, Singapore ETH Centre. She received her Ph.D. in Bioscience Engineering from KU Leuven. Her research integrates remote sensing, urban ecology, and environmental epidemiology to provide evidence-based information for public health solutions. Dengkai leads research in the Health domain.

Dr. Zhu Yue

Dr. Zhu Yue is Postdoctoral Researcher at ETH Zurich and Singapore ETH Centre. Prior to her postdoc, she completed a PhD in Architecture at the University of Cambridge, UK. Her research interests lie at the intersection of Urban Resilience and GeoAI. Yue leads research in the Hydrology and Urban Multifunctionality domains.

Qiu Yeshan

Qiu Yeshan is PhD candidate at the National University of Singapore and the Singapore ETH Centre. Her research focuses on urban biodiversity, landscape ecological patterns, and the functional relationships between urban form and ecosystem processes. Yeshan leads research in the Biodiversity domain.

Wang Jing

Wang Jing is Researcher at the Future Cities Laboratory, Singapore-ETH Centre. She holds a Master’s degree in Urban Planning from the National University of Singapore. Her research integrates urban form, urban economics, causal inference and unsupervised learning to measure the social and environmental outcomes of spatial policies. Jing leads research within the Socioeconomics domain.

Dr. Naika Meili

Dr. Naika Meili worked as Postdoctoral Researcher at the Future Cities Laboratory, Singapore ETH Centre. She holds a PhD in Environmental Engineering from ETH Zurich. Her research interests include urban climate, urban ecohydrology, ecosystem services, and mechanistic modelling. Naika leads research in the Climate & Energy domain.

Collaborators

Prof. Gabriele Manoli

Prof. Gabriele Manoli is Assistant Professor in School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering at EPFL. His research seeks to understand land–atmosphere interactions and human–natural dynamics. He integrates hydrology, ecology, and complex systems science to guide the design of sustainable, climate-responsive urban environments.

Dr. Dan Richards

Dr. Dan Richards is a Senior Researcher and Research Priority Area Leader at the Bioeconomy Science Institute in New Zealand. His work investigates how ecosystems contribute to human well-being, using field data, remote sensing, and novel data sources to quantify ecosystem services across scales.

Prof. Jun Yang

Prof. Jun Yang is Professor in the Department of Earth System Science at Tsinghua University. His research focuses on urban ecology under global change, including quantifying urban ecosystem structure and function, and examining relationships among biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human well-being.

Prof. Amy Hahs

Prof. Amy Hahs is Associate Professor in Urban Horticulture at the School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, University of Melbourne. Her research investigates how urban landscapes impact local ecology. Her work spans diverse building projects that develop green, healthy cities and conserve resilient ecosystems.

Dr. Brenda Lin

Dr. Brenda Lin is a Research Scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia. Her research examines how natural systems can be integrated into developed landscapes to enhance ecosystem services that support environmental quality and human well-being.

Prof. Mark McDonnell

Prof. Mark McDonnell is Honorary Associate Professor in the School of BioSciences at the University of Melbourne. His research spans vegetation and ecosystem change, landscape ecology, and urban ecosystem structure and function. He is known for pioneering studies on urban–rural gradients and comparative urban ecology.