How to Design Cities? Urban Planning Beyond Human Inhabitants

Do You Know How to Design Cities? Streets Gone Wild

The lockdown period during the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic provided a collective experience of what Freudian psychoanalysis terms the “return of the repressed.” Nature, an element meant to be kept in check, instead emerged in broad daylight on city streets. To this day, we are startled by camera-captured images of animals strolling through deserted urban centers.

A puma in Santiago, Chile’s capital; a herd of deer leisurely ambling along Krupówki Street in Zakopane; fish visible in Venice’s canals. These and other evocative images of wild animals in cities reminded us that they coexist with us, engaging in numerous, often invisible interactions with humans and urban spaces. Wild animals appearing on typically bustling streets challenged our belief in controlling nature, much like the virus itself did.

Where Are These Animals?

Despite numerous examples from quarantine times, we still resist acknowledging – and thus seeing – wild animals and vegetation in cities, with a few exceptions. These include ducks, provided they do not leave the ponds or defecate on walkways. Hedgehogs are tolerated, as long as they do not need to hibernate in unsightly piles of leaves. Squirrels are acceptable if they pose for photos rather than raid trash bins. In other words, we accept their presence within carefully defined parameters.

The binary distinction between nature versus culture persists. Consequently, shared spaces are artificially divided into areas for humans and areas for nature. This dualistic worldview is also present in architecture.

For years, architecture’s primary goal was to separate humans from the external world. Designers attempted to overcome nature, even at the landscape planning level. Consequently, parks are not the most biodiverse areas in cities. Counterintuitively, the greatest species diversity is found in wastelands – places untouched by human development. However, how can we consciously integrate nature into cities? And what purpose do such endeavors serve?

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Where Does Your Toilet Water Go?

Modernists once sparked a revolution in construction. Le Corbusier, a leading French modernist, claimed that “a house is a machine for living in” and should harmonize with both human organisms and nature. His canonical realization of this thought was the Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, a massive residential block that also housed shops, a library, and a swimming pool. The roof featured a terrace with a garden, isolated from city noise. Another radical project by the French architect involved demolishing the entire old town of Paris to build a new, more efficient, and greener city. Naturally, it was never realized. Le Corbusier’s thinking was driven not only by the famous slogan “sun, space, greenery,” but also by adaptation to the poor economic and housing situation after World War II.

Today, non-human or multi-species urbanism proposes equally revolutionary ideas in construction and urban planning. The “green” projects it suggests stem from adopting a broader perspective, considering climate change, and urban symbiosis with animals and plants. Contemporary philosopher Timothy Morton vividly captures this, arguing that the previous architectural approach was based on shifting the effects of human activity elsewhere. In Architecture Without Nature, he ponders:

“If there is no yonder, if we know that when we flush the toilet the waste goes somewhere, there is no way to which to send anything”, Morton writes in the context of urban solutions.

How we manage cities, waste, water, and the habitat conditions for wild animals always impacts a specific place. It may affect our city or spaces beyond its borders. The situation on the Oder River in 2022, which could still recur, serves as an example. Exceeding water salinity norms – due to excessive waste dumping – caused golden algae to bloom, leading to mass fish deaths. Ultimately, the ecological catastrophe stretched for hundreds of kilometers. The city may remain clean, but there is always a “specific somewhere.”

How to Design Cities? The Direction of Change

Contrary to earlier beliefs about planning shared spaces, non-human or multi-species urbanism asserts that when moving from rural to urban areas, the natural environment and climate do not magically disappear. They are ever-present, though often meticulously concealed by humans. Take the Rawa River, hidden beneath Katowice’s market square, over which flows its artificial, more presentable simulation.

Nature should be treated as an integral part of human spaces. In times of global warming, what was once peripheral is increasingly making its presence felt. Failing to consider the multidimensional natural aspect risks destabilizing the environment – both locally and globally. Frequent mowing and maintaining grass at low heights leads to soil depletion, reduced populations of soil organisms and insects, and consequently, small vertebrates, including birds. In such situations, only invasive species thrive.

The characteristic scorched lawns during summer are not merely an aesthetically dubious, insect-free calling card of a “clean” city. They also exacerbate drought due to poor water accumulation in underdeveloped roots. Paradoxically, during intense rainfall, they increase flood risk due to water not being absorbed by the parched soil.

Non-human urbanism primarily promotes comprehensive and long-term thinking. Greening city centers is a multi-faceted approach – regulating hydrology, creating natural habitats for other species, and combating heat islands. The antithesis of this approach is not only the so-called “concretization” of city centers but also the placing of trees in pots amidst cobblestones. After all, over 60% of a tree’s total biomass consists of root systems that capture and store water. This puzzling trend of potted trees has recently appeared in Krakow’s market square, for instance.

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How to Design Cities. Manifesto for Non-Human Urbanism

Living in times when extreme weather events (such as prolonged droughts and sudden floods) are statistically more frequent, we cannot afford solutions from the previous century. Non-human urbanism is a young discipline. It proposes concrete actions for the present while continually seeking new solutions. Nevertheless, architects from the “koozArch” magazine have issued a brief Manifesto for the Non-Human City.

According to the manifesto, urban planners should design ecological niches to ensure small urban ecosystems. Cities should aim to connect green arteries, facilitating movement for animals present in the space. Local governments should focus not only on more green spaces but also on native plant species. Most interestingly, those involved in spatial design are calling for a limitation on space design. Instead, they propose opening the city to the creative action of non-human forces: in wastelands, urban meadows, or in the preserved sections of fallen trees in parks.

Translation: Klaudia Tarasiewicz

Read the text in Polish: Jak projektować miasta? Z myślą o naturze