London and Austin, TexasMay 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The King’s Foundation and FormationQ today announced a new partnership aimed at demonstrating how towns across the Commonwealth can leverage quantum technology to achieve sustainable growth.
FormationQ Logo
This partnership, titled “Harmonious Urban Growth: A Health-Optimised Expansion Framework Using Quantum Methods,” is a three-year project designed to help cities achieve sustainable growth while improving the health of both people and the planet. The initiative will integrate advanced computational modeling techniques, including quantum optimization supported by IonQ’s trapped-ion systems, aiming to explore new pathways for planning complex urban systems and sustainable town planning.
Today, approximately 1.3 billion people live in unplanned settlements, and this number is expected to increase by over one billion in the next 30 years. In the absence of planning frameworks, urban expansion often leads to infrastructure and public services struggling to keep pace with population growth, creating long-term challenges in transportation, public health, and environmental resilience. Early planning helps cities become more livable, walkable, and sustainable. In many of the fastest-growing regions, professional planning resources are scarce, yet the need to coordinate urban expansion has never been greater.
The “Harmonious Urban Growth” project builds on The King’s Foundation’s Rapid Planning Toolkit, a practical methodology developed with Commonwealth partners following the Sustainable Urbanisation Declaration at the 2022 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. This toolkit assists mayors, planning departments, and built environment experts in establishing clear frameworks to effectively guide responsible urban expansion before informal settlement patterns become irreversible.
The toolkit was piloted in Bo, Sierra Leone, helping local government and community stakeholders avoid construction on flood-prone wetlands while identifying walkable areas and infrastructure corridors for future expansion.
This three-year project will be supported by UK-based urban planning consultancy Space Syntax, which will contribute its expertise in urban research, mapping, and data analysis to the initiative. Working collaboratively with The King’s Foundation and FormationQ, they will apply digital modeling techniques to the toolkit’s implementation and develop new platforms leveraging IonQ’s quantum technology to enhance our understanding of complex urban systems.
Ben Bolgar, Executive Director of Projects at The King’s Foundation, said:
“We are delighted to establish this partnership with FormationQ to explore how our Rapid Planning Toolkit can help communities around the world achieve sustainable growth. We hope that the work of The King’s Foundation project team will thereby reach more communities and generate a positive impact.”
Through this collaboration, FormationQ will provide advanced computational and optimization support based on the IonQ quantum platform, helping planners explore vast numbers of potential spatial layout options across interconnected systems such as water supply networks, ecological corridors, transportation infrastructure, community centers, and neighborhood structures.
Urban planning involving these multiple layers entails highly complex combinatorial decision-making processes. Utilizing advanced optimization techniques, including quantum methods, can more efficiently analyze these interactions and generate alternative spatial frameworks that balance walkability, environmental resilience, infrastructure efficiency, and economic accessibility.
Nada Hosking, Founder and CEO of FormationQ, said:
“Rapid urbanization is one of the most complex systemic challenges of the 21st century. Cities must simultaneously address and balance environmental resilience, infrastructure capacity, economic opportunity, and human well-being. Advances in computational modeling, including quantum optimization techniques, offer new pathways for exploring these complex interactions and can provide robust support for optimizing planning decisions.”
This computational modeling provides a scientific basis for participatory planning processes, in which planning experts, local governments, and community representatives jointly review various spatial options to develop optimal planning frameworks. Subsequently, proposed plans can be tested directly on the ground: by physically marking out streets, squares, and public spaces on site, supplemented by digital mapping, to provide precise guidance for early-stage development.
By integrating quantum computing, participatory planning, and on-the-ground testing, the “Harmonious Urban Growth” project aims to build a scalable framework for scientifically guiding sustainable urban expansion in rapidly urbanizing regions. The collaboration between The King’s Foundation and FormationQ reflects a shared commitment to supporting resilient communities and responsible stewardship of the built environment.
Notes to Editors
About The King’s Foundation
The King’s Foundation, founded by King Charles III, was first established in 1990. The core mission of this charity is to build sustainable communities and transform people’s lives.
Inspired by His Majesty’s values, the Foundation is dedicated to building and supporting communities that achieve harmony between people, place, and planet. The Foundation’s project team works both domestically and internationally, covering stakeholder and community engagement, master planning, and community regeneration. For over 35 years, the team has planned hundreds of thousands of homes within walkable neighborhoods and revitalized a range of historic buildings. In addition to its activities in the UK, the Foundation has delivered projects in more than a dozen locations worldwide.
The King’s Foundation is headquartered at its flagship regeneration project, Dumfries House in Ayrshire, Scotland, and oversees other historic royal sites including Highgrove Gardens and The Castle of Mey. The charity also runs educational programs and cultural activities in London at The King’s School for Traditional Arts, The Garrison Chapel, and Trinity Buoy Wharf.
About FormationQ
FormationQ is the global enablement layer for the practical application of quantum technology. The company builds institutional pathways and collaborative structures to translate quantum technology from cutting-edge research into real-world applications. By partnering with leading institutions and technology partners, FormationQ operates and supports programs aimed at fostering talent development, application building, and ecosystem coordination in a governable, trustworthy, and sustainable manner.
About IonQ
IonQ, Inc. [NYSE: IONQ] is a leading global quantum platform and commercial provider, offering integrated quantum solutions spanning computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s latest-generation quantum computer, IonQ Tempo, is the newest in a series of cutting-edge systems that have consistently enabled customers and partners, including Amazon Web Services, NVIDIA, and AstraZeneca, to achieve 20x performance improvements and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company set a world record for quantum computing performance, achieving 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity.
IonQ is headquartered in College Park, Maryland, with operations in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Washington, and in Italy, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, and the UK. Our quantum computing services are available through all major cloud providers, while we also serve networking and sensing customers across land, sea, air, and space domains. IonQ is making quantum platforms more accessible and impactful than ever before. For more information, visit IonQ.com.