LIFE-CENTRED URBAN DESIGN & FUTURING WORKSHOP
A More-Than-Human City: Sydney
A life-centred, more-than-human urban design workshop with government and climate professionals using non-human personas and futuring to redesign their city to support biodiversity and climate adaptation.
What this project explores
How might cities be designed for people and urban wildlife to nurture biodiversity?
Cities are often designed as exclusively human environments, with biodiversity treated as an afterthought or something to be protected elsewhere.
Yet urban spaces already host a wide range of non-human life that must adapt to heat, habitat loss, and climate disruption.
LCD Lab was invited by AdaptNSW Forum 2023 to deliver a keynote presentation and workshop with government, industry, and climate adaptation professionals, to introduce how non-human personas could be used as a practical design tool to support coexistence between people and urban wildlife, while responding to the pressures of climate change and biodiversity loss.
Damien Lutz and Dr Susanne Pratt
Urban spaces & infrastructure
Public spaces, civic buildings, transport infrastructure, and recreational environments shaping both human and non-human life
Climate adaptation
How heat, extreme weather, and changing environmental conditions affect the ability of cities and urban wildlife to adapt and coexist
Behaviours & coexistence
How human movement, leisure, and use of city spaces interact with non-human needs, conflicts, and opportunities for shared use
Living ecosystems
Urban animals and ecological systems affected by habitat fragmentation, heat stress, and design decisions within the city
The problems and opportunities
Urban environments are typically designed around short-term human needs, often overlooking their impact on non-human life.
This creates several challenges:
- Loss of habitat and ecological corridors within cities
- Increased heat stress for urban wildlife
- Fragmented and unsafe movement through human spaces
- Design decisions that unintentionally exclude or harm non-human life
- Biodiversity strategies disconnected from everyday urban design practice
As climate change intensifies, these challenges become more acute for both people and wildlife.
Unlock the ideas that design for all life
Members access the more-than-human innovations in detail.
Plus free tools, the non-human persona library, and introductions to futuring, biomimicry, and other life-centred design branches.
Interested in a More Than Human workshop?
This workshop can be customised to your place (building, school, etc.) and duration needs.
Watch the Keynote Presentation
Damien Lutz’s keynote presentation for the AdaptNSW Forum 2023, sharing with climate professionals and government workers a creative approach to designing for more-than-human needs to support biodiversity, and climate adaptation and mitigation.
Learn More-Than-Human Design
