King Charles is taking his vision for sustainable communities beyond British shores, leveraging his charity to bring advanced technology to developing nations struggling with urban expansion.
The monarch first established himself as a champion of thoughtful town planning through Poundbury, the model settlement he created in Dorset.
Now, through the King’s Foundation, he is launching the Harmonious Urban Growth project, an ambitious initiative deploying quantum computing to assist Commonwealth countries with infrastructure planning.
The programme represents a world first, marking the inaugural application of quantum technology to sustainable urban development anywhere on the globe.
King Charles is taking his vision for sustainable communities beyond British shores, leveraging his charity to bring advanced technology to developing nations struggling with urban expansion.
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PA
Belize and Zambia have been selected as the initial beneficiaries of this groundbreaking scheme.
The King’s Foundation will collaborate with FormationQ, an American quantum computing specialist, over the coming three years to deliver expertise across six cities within Commonwealth nations.
UK-based urban planning consultants Space Syntax will also contribute to the initiative.
The project addresses a pressing global challenge: approximately 1.3 billion individuals, representing nearly one sixth of humanity, currently reside in unplanned settlements including shanty towns, villages and favelas.
Projections indicate this figure will swell by an additional billion people within the next three decades.
The monarch first established himself as a champion of thoughtful town planning through Poundbury, the model settlement he created in Dorset.
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PA
The King recognised that directing the growth of such communities through deliberate planning, rather than allowing them to develop haphazardly, would yield significant benefits for public health, environmental resilience and long-term sustainability.
Quantum computers offer distinct advantages over conventional machines by performing numerous calculations simultaneously rather than sequentially, dramatically accelerating the planning process and enabling predictions about future generations’ requirements.
This computational power allows urban planners to optimise the allocation of available water supplies, electricity generation capacity, transport connections and other essential infrastructure.
The Foundation has already demonstrated its approach in Bo, Sierra Leone, where it assisted local planning authorities by identifying areas vulnerable to flooding that should remain undeveloped.
That earlier project also pinpointed walkable zones and designated infrastructure corridors to guide future expansion.
The King’s Foundation will collaborate with FormationQ, an American quantum computing specialist, over the coming three years to deliver expertise across six cities within Commonwealth nations.
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PA
Many towns and cities most urgently requiring forward planning lack access to professional planning resources, prompting the Foundation and FormationQ to step in.
Nada Hosking, founder and chief executive of FormationQ, said: “Rapid urbanisation is one of the most complex systems challenges of the 21st century. Cities must balance environmental resilience, infrastructure capacity, economic opportunity and human wellbeing simultaneously.
“Advances in computational modelling, including quantum optimisation techniques, offer new ways to explore these complex interactions and support better planning decisions.”
Local community leaders will participate in consultations throughout the planning process, with streets, squares and public spaces marked out on the ground before final decisions are made.
The King’s Foundation, established in 1990, has spent 35 years developing plans for hundreds of thousands of homes in walkable communities whilst restoring historic properties such as Dumfries House in Ayrshire.