Traditional planning methods for urban systems reach their limits, as continuous interactions among people and socio-economic and ecological variables generate increasingly complex and unsustainable environments, which impact human health, well-being and ecological quality. Our goal is therefore to generate exemplary sustainable urban patterns on regional and local scale for selected case study areas in the Limmattal close to Zurich. This requires developing new approaches clarifying design tasks through an iteration of thorough spatial, infrastructural and socioeconomic readings, conceptual interpretations and their testing – guided by design, supported by simulation and collaborative modelling.

The overall goal of the NRP 65 project “SUPat – Sustainable Urban Patterns” is to establish a collaborative modelling platform, which bundles the diverse capabilities and methods of designers, planners, scientists and simulation tools, such as advanced economic and transport modelling tools, ecological process models, and social analyses, to derive at convincing sustainable urban patterns. Overall the collaborative modelling platform will accelerate knowledge exchange between relevant actors and serve as an operative tool to assess the conditions under which specific urban qualities have a good chance to achieve their environmental, social and economic goals.