This is Part 2 from a short story series. In the first part, we got to know Chloe and Sofia, Dm collaborators, we explored city life and its intricate issues, and we explored the concept of well-being as a central indicator of urban success. In this second part, we get to meet Sebastian, discover the work that was done in Germany, and distill some of the key success factors for this work to have an impact.

If you are not reading this in a city with your windows wide open, or your city is missing trees, we invite you to play this soundscape to set the mood:

“How do you actually transition a system?”
I asked, flipping open my notebook.

Sebastian Klemm, a Dm collaborator, leaned back in his chair, a slight smile forming, I could see the answer wasn’t going to be theory: it was a lived experience.

“Well,” he said, “you start with the tools. But that’s never enough.” 

The conference had been buzzing with urgency, climate scientists, urban planners, city officials, all hunting for new levers to steer cities through accelerating ecological and social turbulence. For Sebastian, something clicked there. The conversations that took place in rooms and coffee breaks were the real ignition. He got in touch with the TreesAI team to co-write a funding application that week, and though the first round failed, they nailed it the second time. That win was Stuttgart, a testing ground. He stepped in part-time, slowly growing into what would become a full time role at Dm. He wasn’t alone. Dm was emerging as a unique player: part research studio, part systems engine, part myth-breaker. Its ambition? To build an operating system for commons-private governance.

In city after city, Sebastian saw the same pattern. The need for climate resilience was urgent, but siloed approaches and fragmented incentives made any real transformation feel elusive. “We started with logic,” he explained. “We built a dashboard, scoring risks across social, environmental, and economic dimensions. Overlaid demographic heat with poverty and climate vulnerability. It made sense. But it wasn’t enough.”

In Berlin, they changed tactics.

Instead of just crunching data and handing it to decision-makers, they invited the ecosystem in. City utilities like energy management, water, transport, joined the table. Financial institutions were engaged as co-designers beyond their role as funders. Citizen councils were looped in from the start. What emerged was a triangle of legitimacy: public, private, and civic. And the triangle had a common ground: the trees.

There was a plan to expand a train line. Innocuous in appearance, except it meant cutting trees. The cost-benefit calculation was as usual: the trees can be planted elsewhere, the compensation costs are minimal, and often replanting happened far from the impacted neighborhood. No benefits were taken into consideration.

“See the problem?” Sebastian asked. “The neighborhood loses shade, air quality, and emotional anchors, while some other parts of the city get a few saplings. It doesn’t fix the loss. It moves it.”

So they zoomed in, curious about what they would discover about the values the trees generated. The health costs are avoided thanks to cooling, stormwater retention, and biodiversity. They translated it all into numbers, mapped it into dashboards, and tied it to the lived experience of residents. Then came the reveal.

The setting was perfect in its ordinariness: the canteen of a local Berlin school, just refurbished. The faint smell of fresh paint lingered in the air. Chairs were neatly arranged, coffee was brewing in large thermos canisters, and plates of snacks lay waiting.

Despite being a weekend, every district lead showed up. The tension was palpable: this meeting followed a heated exchange over a proposed traffic reroute. People were skeptical, even angry.

“I remember waiting to go on stage,” Sebastian told me. “The room felt stiff, wired. We were nervous.”

Then he started speaking—about trees.

As he spoke, the mood shifted. “We didn’t say, ‘Trees are nice.’ We said: ‘Here’s what they do. Here’s the money they save you. Here’s what it costs to cut them down and not replace their function.’ And suddenly, people listened. You could feel it in the room—the interest and curiosity taking place.”

People weren’t just nodding, they were really leaning forward. It’s the first time they were seeing trees from this angle. Someone whispered to a neighbor. A city councilor took out his phone and began snapping photos of the slides. When the event ended, conversations kept going, in the hallway, by the snack table, and later over emails. That talk changed something. “I was able to speak to city councilors informally—like, duzen,” said Sebastian, using the familiar German “you.” “And we got alignment. We built a shared truth: that trees matter, economically and socially. To arrive there, our commissioned study was never the hero of the story. Its real power was catalytic – it set in motion a conversation that moved beyond numbers and dashboards, toward rethinking and consciously reshaping the ‘dark matter’ of how cities value and finance what sustains them.”

The impact is starting to ripple. The triangle (public service, civic actors, financial stakeholders) are beginning to evolve into a new kind of governance mechanism. It isn’t formalized yet, but we are in the process of it. 

Berlin became a living lab for systems integration. Stuttgart helped refine the tools. In Glasgow, roots had been planted. Now, they are starting to bear fruit. “Cities already have climate adaptation strategies,” Sebastian explained. “What they don’t have is integration. We bring ecosystem valuation and people into the same space.”

We are not product vendors trying to sell software. We are co-designers, willing to mould to context. 

Now they’re planning an open-source publication. A planning framework for cities that includes indicators like biodiversity ratios, retention values, risk profiles. Something that any city, from Berlin to Bogotá, could pick up and use.

“You know,” Sebastian said, as we wrapped up, “what we’re really doing is showing people a mirror. We help them see the city as alive, and their role in shaping it.”

And maybe that’s the real transformation:
From technical intervention to emotional ownership.
From risk dashboards to urban belonging.
From numbers… to meaning.