Sydney, as a city and an urban space, is in a state of expansion. To try to solve the housing crisis and create more livable spaces, we see calls for the mass approval of large scale development schemes. These projects, however, lack an acute sensitivity to the city’s massive biodiversity loss, carbon construction footprint and concrete heat emission. To continue in this direction would be to design, for an ultimately unliveable, anthropocentric city.
Academic Danielle Celermajer puts it best, stating urban areas “have been designed for and organised with the interests of certain humans…in mind, but of course, there are so many others who live or exist here.”
Celermajer includes not only animals, birds, trees and plants in this argument, but “the waterways that have been often violently reshaped, and the soils that were once the ground on which ecological communities flourished but have now been desiccated.”
Urban planning; decentring the human.
To combat this desiccation, Sydney’s urban planning needs to lose its human focus. Of course, city planning that completely de-centres the human agenda is not wholly achievable. Rather, we want to imagine a Sydney that begins to examine, and hopefully integrates cohabitation with multiple species as a driving design factor.
‘Multispecies living’ is a theory widely reproached and discussed among the fields of environmental politics, ecology, sociology, anthropology, architecture, design and planning. Importantly, ‘multispecies’ living rejects the centrality of humans, and centres an Indigenous ecology. Indigenous Australian culture considers the idea that as humans, we have a relational responsibility to ensure that all species flourish. Multispecies living is vital, not only for its potential to restore biodiversity loss, but also for its contribution to the cause of multispecies justice — a practice that works to dismantle the pervading structures of late-stage colonialism and capitalism.
Through this lens, we can begin to imagine a built world that is socially and physically tenable beyond the next 100 years. Projects that consider this idea are beginning to evolve. “Alive: A New Spatial Contract for Multispecies Architecture”, is a project that came out of an exhibition in the 2021 Biennale, collaboratively created by (The Living, David Benjamin, Lindsey Wikstrom, Ray Wang, Jim Stoddart, Lorenzo Villaggi, John Locke, Damon Lau, Dale Zhao, with Factory NYC and Columbia GSAPP.) In considering multispecies living, it examines as per Alive’s public ethos, “a new vision of probiotic buildings.” Through the integration of natural materials and modern architecture, the prototype gives a tangible reality to architecture that creates a symbiotic environment for both humans and microbes. The piece evocatively considers the question of how we can “harness the microbes that invisibly surround us” in order to create more sustainable and healthy environments for all species.
As a more practical application of this exhibition, Carla Bonnilla Huaroc explores possibilities surrounding “interspecies design.” She examines how an architectural philosophy that advocates non-hierarchical relationships between species can function to “cultivate empathy for other life forms and shift our perspective on the world around us.”
Antithetically, whilst concrete in urban expansion and infrastructure is not a sustainable idea, Huaroc explores “Econcrete” which is a “concrete technology engineered to foster marine life on shore infrastructure.” In essence, by simulating complex surface textures and shapes, it promotes the growth of organisms such as oysters, whilst being beneficial to the overall stability of the shore infrastructure.
An approach that would promote rehabilitation of one of the central species in the greater Sydney area are ‘Bee Bricks’. Bee Bricks are bricks that house solo bees within them, and as such offer a possible solution to serious habitat loss that bees have been facing for years. There has been some contention surrounding their effectiveness, but nevertheless, they advocate for the building of technologies that are angled towards a biodiverse rehabilitation, thinking directly aligned with a multispecies approach.
Sydney’s current applications of non-anthropogenic thinking.
The Central Park Sydney vertical gardens are an important example to consider. Though not functional in their practical use, the gardens create a host of benefits that demonstrate how the need for increased housing can be conceptualised with the need for multispecies living. Specifically, the presence of vertical gardens acts as a natural layer of insulation for the building, decreasing interior temperature levels, which as the planet continues to warm, will be an invaluable resource.
The gardens are sustained by irrigation systems that use recycled wastewater. This has increased the biodiversity, otherwise lost by the development of the highrise building, creating new habitat space for birds and insects. This type of architecture, though not perfect, is angled towards sustainability and biodiversity, acting as a guide for what Sydney should continue to strive towards. Danielle Celermajer notes that “human health, human community and human joy is greatly enhanced when we are embedded in flourishing ecosystems.”
A design such as the vertical gardens works to embed human existence within a multispecies eco-system and has been proven to have tangible health benefits.
Both of these examples, one prototype and one practical, act as a precedent for the implementation of “Multispecies Justice.”
First Nations, socio-cultural and environmental sensitivities
In integrating a multispecies approach towards Sydney, an ideal process would be led by and in consultation with both First Nation’s planners and designers, and the Connective Country government planning guidelines. The veins of multispecies thought have been ever-present in First Nation’s culture, pre-dating any sight of colonial design.
In a 2020 podcast series ‘Capitalism, Colonialism, and Multispecies Justice’, that came out of \The University of Sydney’sEnvironment Institute, Professor Christine Winter (Ngati Kahungunu ki Wairoa, Ngati Pakeha), a justice theorist and researcher, states that “settlers are to listen and learn how to implement regimes of multispecies justice from their Indigenous compatriots.”
In speaking to Jirrabal woman Aunty Sonya Grant, she explained that Indigenous understandings are inherently holistic and Land and Country hold a deeply complex spiritual value. There is a foundational, ancestral heritage held within Country, endowing it as both a metaphysical and physical being. This empowers people to hold roles of custodianship, and responsibilities of care. Indeed, as identities are place-based, there is an intrinsic relationality which sees land as connected to the person, as well as being a living and breathing entity.
You care for country and Country cares for you — an Indigenous Australian knowledge system that has long since championed the idea of multispecies justice. In Australia, this looks like ‘The Rights of Nature’ movement, which advocates a First-Nations led approach towards “Earth Centred Culture.” Specifically, according to the Australian Earth Law Center, “ the Rights of Nature […] means recognizing that ecosystems and natural communities are not merely property that can be owned. Rather, they are entities that have an independent and inalienable right to exist and flourish.”
This sentiment is echoed in Winter’s calls for “land back and water back to Indigenous care” in order to disrupt and dismantle structures of colonialism and capitalism that flourish because of human centred planning.
Where to next?
National, organisational and corporate social responsibility has never been needed more; and not in the vanity metrics or sustainability quotas previously recognised as enough. Informed schools of thought like multispecies living and material-conscious architecture are one of the methods we need to consider if non-anthropogenic urban planning and environmental preservation is to ever be materialised. With Indigenous knowledge and care at the forefront, multispecies living and justice is an achievable cause that should be implemented into Sydney’s urban planning and architecture development.