More-Than-Human Urban Design
Design urban spaces to nurture all its lifeforms
Cities provide essential food, shelter, and infrastructure for humans, but they often negatively impact biodiversity. Urbanisation damages habitats, disrupts ecosystems with artificial lighting and noise pollution, and puts stress on plants, animals, and microbes.
More than Human Urban Design can help shift urban to nurture the needs of life for greater biodiversity and all the benefits that brings.
Designing urban spaces that nurture plant, animal, and environmental needs involves creating green areas, urban forests, wildlife corridors, and sustainable ecosystems within cities.
This approach fosters coexistence between all life forms by providing safe habitats for wildlife, supporting plant growth, and maintaining natural systems that benefit both humans and nature. It is crucial for biodiversity and climate change because urbanisation often disrupts habitats, threatening species and increasing climate vulnerability.
The benefits include enhancing ecological balance, improving air and water quality, increasing climate resilience, and creating more livable, healthier cities.
By integrating nature into urban design, we foster harmony between humans, plants, animals, and the environment, ensuring a sustainable future for all.
Why “More Than Human” Cities?
More-than-human city design recognises cities as shared habitats, not human-only systems.
By designing urban spaces that support people, animals, plants, and ecosystems together, cities can become healthier, more resilient, and better equipped to face climate and social challenges.
Interspecie Co-existence
Designing more-than-human cities creates space for people, plants, animals, and microbes to live alongside one another.
By providing habitats, corridors, and supportive conditions for non-human life, cities can reduce conflict and stress on ecosystems while improving everyday urban life for humans.
Nurturing biodiversity
Urban biodiversity strengthens natural systems that absorb carbon, regulate temperature, and manage water.
Green spaces, trees, and healthy soils help cool cities, improve air and water quality, and reduce the climate impacts of dense urban development.
Nurturing resilience
Cities designed to support living systems are better able to adapt to heat, flooding, and extreme weather.
Diverse ecosystems increase resilience by buffering environmental shocks, supporting recovery after disruption, and reducing dependence on energy-intensive infrastructure.
Interspecie reconnection
Integrating nature into everyday urban spaces helps people rebuild relationships with the living world.
This connection supports physical and mental wellbeing, fosters care and stewardship for ecosystems, and encourages more sustainable behaviours and values.
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