Cities that steal smart ideas from plants and animals

Architects, designers and urban planners are borrowing from natural phenomena as diverse as termite mounds and resilient grapefruits to design smart, sustainable cities

With soaring glass skyscrapers and swaths of concrete, modern cities often seem actively to work against nature, pushing it down and suppressing it rather than working alongside it.

Yet a growing number of progressive architects, designers, engineers, scientists and urban planners are looking to the Earth's systems for inspiration.