Urban Future series #1 - FutureBuilt
with Birgit Rusten, FutureBuilt – 15.06.25
What practical steps can cities actually take to make a city greener? In this first episode of the What’s That Green? podcast to be recorded LIVE at the Urban Future conference, we speak with Birgit Rusten about the tools FutureBuilt makes available to cities and developers to improve conditions for biodiversity to thrive in the built environment.
Biodiversity has for a long time been overlooked in cities. It is often pushed to the outskirts of the urban realm, and any green patches within the city boundaries are limited or succumb to development. To meet the targets for net zero cities, we need to think differently – to preserve, restore, or for the first time introduce blue-green features and wildlife. The question is: how can we achieve this and build for people at the same time?
To answer that question, we spoke to Birgit Rusten for the first episode of the podcast series we recorded at the Urban Future conference in Łódź, Poland, in May 2025. Birgit is co-founder of and Program Manager at FutureBuilt.
What is FutureBuilt?
Founded in 2010, FutureBuilt is a municipality-owned construction company that uses pilot projects to test and prove the efficacy of Nature-based Solutions in Oslo, Norway.
Jointly owned by ten large municipalities, FutureBuilt specialises in net zero structures that cater for the human needs of today and years to come.
Birgit explains that the pilot project model gives FutureBuilt the chance to change the way urban areas are constructed by testing sustainable methods on an individual development which can later be scaled up.
The pilots therefore enable developers to try out and assess innovations in the built environment that limit the carbon footprint in all stages of the construction cycle. This spans from the materials and energy used, to the transportation of those materials, and to the operation of the buildings.
The FutureBuilt Framework
FutureBuilt sets a mandatory requirement for each project to reduce or eliminate carbon emissions. It additionally asks each development to comply with one of a series of voluntary criteria – for example, enhance circularity in the built environment.
As a biologist, the closest of these to Birgit’s heart is the criteria which asks for the implementation of blue-green infrastructure that protects and enhances local nature.
This natural diversity criteria is itself a framework based on the UN’s call for at least 30% of all land- and water-based nature to be protected, and for the same amount again of degraded nature to be restored by 2030. Both targets are currently far from being met globally, and no municipality seems to be declaring an urban nature emergency. But what if cities took these targets as seriously as they do mitigating their carbon footprint?
Agreed in the early planning stages between the project owner, FutureBuilt, and the relevant municipality, this criteria commits each project to do one or more of the following:
- Preserve existing nature of high ecological value
- Restore degraded biodiversity
- Avoid building on blue/green habitats, or compensate for it where this is unavoidable
- Introduce new chances for nature to get a foothold – whether on the ground, in the walls, or on the roof
These guidelines help turn every project into a chance for nature to thrive.
As well as preserving local species, such as insects and birds, this opens opportunities for citizens to connect more closely to the natural world around them.
Impact is real and measurable. Progress and compliance is monitored by a dedicated environmental advisor, but FutureBuilt helpfully even offers a downloadable calculator (in Norwegian) – a simple-to-use spreadsheet – for actors to quantify how a project meets the criteria.
As a result of helping stakeholders meet their objectives for more environmentally friendly and low-emission developments, Birgit has seen a rise in popularity of the use of this criteria.
Let’s take a look at how this works in practice.
Implementing the Criteria: Magasinparken Secondary School
One example of a NatureBuilt project which has used the biodiversity criteria is the Magasinparken secondary school. Planned to serve residents of a new housing development in Nordre Follo – a fairly small municipality on the periphery of Oslo – this school is in fact an asset from which the whole community benefits.
What that facility would eventually look like was decided in the early stages by the local community. In a project as large as a school building, the developer was challenged to “give something back to the city” in terms of social as well as environmental sustainability, Birgit says. This approach shifted the project from a typical school to a neighborhood anchor, and it began with a participation process.
After ascertaining from the people what they wanted from the school, the authorities earmarked the building and its ground to double up as a genuine public asset: the building was to be made available for use by the community, and its yard would serve as a park. Whereas a school building usually provides a single purpose and is closed after hours, this way it became multifunctional, benefiting all manner of citizens long into the evening.
It was the municipality itself that required Nordre Follo to have as many blue-green features as possible, easing the way for NatureBuilt’s biodiversity criteria.
Even so, Birgit admits that it worked so well mainly because the municipality had the foresight to assemble the right team from the beginning. Including an ecologist and a landscape architect, this was not the typical crew working on building a school! This highlights how collaboration can be as crucial as design in creating a nature-friendly city.
Together with the construction team, they formulated goals, including:
- The use of native Norwegian species
- Preliminary project correcting pricing (a budget review, updating initial estimates to a more realistic projection based on actual construction costs as the project gets underway)
Furthermore, the landscape architects divided the grounds into three parts:
- A forest, preserved as it was, with the exception of removing invasive species
- The grassy meadow, which school pupils would use for recreation
- An area of swampy meadow under power lines – therefore out of bounds to students – replanted with an abundance of Norwegian species, which also provides stormwater management
Together, these elements show how ecological thinking can be woven into every layer of the site.
As a fourth component, all roofs are designed as outdoor living areas: gardens planted with native flowering meadow species. Taller plants are able to take root due to the deeper than average rooftop soil depth, which results in vegetation of various heights with the capacity to attract even more species.
Collaboration, Not Only Criteria
Nature is no longer an inconvenience to be ignored or pushed to the outskirts of the city, but must be thought of as an integral component in every development and every building.
What FutureBuilt’s involvement makes clear, is that anyone involved in city planning and construction now has to have an understanding of how to work with nature. How can cities learn from this mindset shift?
Even private gardens need to be rethought. While residents fortunate enough to have a lawn might benefit from a space to relax or play on – and it even helps soak up stormwater to prevent flooding – Birgit reminds us that it’s still a barren, manicured excuse for nature:
“If you see a green lawn, this has a biodiversity almost as much as asphalt. It’s not very diverse.”
It can be turned around. Birgit notes that brownfield sites are emerging as the new frontier of reintroducing nature into cities, improving the quality of life for those of us who live nearby.
Where once there stood harbours or industrial complexes, for example,there is a chance for developers to revive the living world: “It’s a huge potential for thinking of nature and thinking how to make the city greener”, Birgit explains.
This seems like a fundamental shift for many cities and many developers, so she is sure to stress an important point: what the Magasinparken school project demonstrates, is that these social and environmental benefits can be achieved with little or no extra costs, especially given the added value of creating a valuable social asset like a building which can be hired round the clock.
What if every city approached public buildings in this way?
Birgit’s Advice
Since the inception of FutureBuilt 15 years ago, they have racked up more than 80 projects, including individual buildings and public spaces, such as parks.
Each of these projects is a practical example of how rewilding can be implemented, and becomes a building block informing new ways of approaching construction.
Systemic change is hard to achieve. Birgit says that it’s about finding the right balance: “We challenge the projects, but we also think it’s important to not set [such] high requirements that [are] not possible to reach… We challenge them, but we also want them to succeed”.
The learning from each pilot informs the criteria, which FutureBuilt makes available – for free – on their website. This can be used as is or, as Birgit advises, it can inspire a project or inform a version of the criteria customised for local conditions.
What follows may not ever be perfect, at least not until we’ve had a chance to test, assess, and improve an idea in any given location. And, as Birgit says, preserving and restoring nature will never fully replace what was lost to the built environment. But any break from the status quo is potentially an improvement and may very well stave off climate breakdown and the loss of species: “We can always do better, but it’s always important to do something and start moving.”
Ignoring nature in the built environment is no longer an option. This is the philosophy that inspires FutureBuilt…and can be a rallying call to us all.
In the coming months we’ll be bringing you more episodes recorded live at Urban Future, including… So stay tuned!
Host and co-writer: Fanny Téoule
Guest: Birgit Rusten
Audio editor and writer: Karl Dickinson
Music composer: Jenny Nedosekina
Graphic designer: Julia Micklewright
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