The Scape Foundation was founded in 2020 to enhance the biodiversity and liveability of urban communities for all living things.
We connect researchers, designers and developers to create susatainable and future-proof green ecosystems through open source projects, research, data and tools.
vision
Our existential stability on earth rests in the variety of all life that lives on our planet, the diversity of their natural habitats and the dynamic relationships that arise within them. Biodiversity is the reason and the prerequisite for natural life, where it provides clean water, fertile soil, resource-rich food, the raw materials for housing and a stable climate for all organisms on earth.
Biodiversity has also enabled the emergence of cities, in which the same dynamics gives rise to a plethora of cultures, emotions, ideas and innovations. In the coming decades, the earth will experience the largest and fastest period of urban sprawl in human history and the population of urban communities will double. Urbanisation is already increasingly decreasing our connection with nature worldwide, partly because cities are primarily designed and developed as an exclusionary human habitats, often neglecting an integral and reciprocal relationship with nature.
Partly because of this, the human influence on the conditions of life on Earth is enormous. Urban buildings, infrastructure, industry, consumption, and emissions have caused the evolutionary relationships between species to break down in part or in their entirety. Urban growth will therefore have a significant impact on biodiversity in both natural and artificial habitats, and thus the many ecosystem services on which our society relies. Urbanisation is now leading not only to the decline within human environments, but also to a loss of the overall biodiversity on earth, which causes hundreds of plant and animal species to disappear worldwide every year.
The continued growth of the world's population and increasing urbanisation therefore poses enormous challenges to our relationship with the natural environment. At the same time, cities also offer opportunities for the conservation and promotion of biodiversity. They can be used in the transition to an inclusive green economy in both developing countries and the developed world. Cities planned, developed and managed with nature in integrated manner have the potential to support and promote socially just, culturally vibrant, economically productive and environmentally sustainable societies.
Well-designed cities have the potential to house large numbers of people in a relatively small footprint in a sustainable manner, provide those people a better quality of life, achieve greater resource efficiency and allow the preservation of larger unspoiled natural areas. Creating more urban nature as living ecosystems with native species and nature types also adds an extra dimension to habitable cities that reconcile human society and biodiversity.
The Scape Foundation believes that tomorrow's urban areas should be as healthy and rich in biodiversity as the nature outside its boundaries. We believe that sustainable urban development includes balancing and improving biodiversity to create value for people, society, nature and the environment.
mission
The Scape Foundation's mission is to stimulate and increase the biodiversity in urban communities so that they establish a more sustainable relationship with the ecosystems on which they depend. The Scape Foundation wants to make urban nature a focal point in both the development of new urban areas, considering existing nature planning and design, and in the redevelopment of existing urban areas, where habitats for locally native species and nature types can be restored.
The Scape Foundation wants to create aesthetically pleasing green and blue areas that integrate and balance living urban nature with features for human use and habitats for wild species.
ambition
The Scape Foundation aims to support and create solutions for the planning, design and development of biodiverse urban communities. To this end, the Scape Foundation aims to develop open-source research, data and tools to enable researchers, designers, planners and developers to create nature-inclusive urban communities. Communities in which biodiversity, multi-species cohabitats, bioremediation and health are spatially integrated.