Nowhere is that tension clearer than in the smart city.
“Where we see sensors today, it’s really tied to operational efficiency of the city,” said Anthony Vanky, an urbanist and assistant professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, “be it getting things to move faster or more smoothly or cheaply.”
Cyborg botany inverts that logic, shifting the focus from efficiency to responsiveness, care, and coexistence. Because plants need healthy environments to thrive, their responses could help cities identify and act on environmental harms at a more local scale. A smart city powered by cyborg botany, for instance, might use plant data on air pollution to identify which traffic corridors need decongesting, or detect hotspots of soil contamination before they become a broader public health risk.
“What are the opportunities to rethink this kind of intelligence at different scales?” Vanky asked. “We as individuals do not live in the city as a whole. We live in a series of rooms and other spaces. What if the plant could help interpret the environmental conditions around me, from my room to my home to my building to my city?”
Vanky envisions living sensors interacting directly with a resident’s immediate environment. A plant might help manage climate controls by communicating with a building’s heating and cooling system, or serve as a subtle wellness indicator, nudging someone to rest or hydrate. More broadly, integrating responsive greenery into buildings could create space for a slower kind of computation, one that moves people away from industrial time and toward a more reciprocal ecosystem among living beings. There is also a growing body of evidence linking greater access to greenery with lower stress and better mental health.