Blog post #2 (February 2025)
A more-than-human path to sustainable cities
How can we live with, not against, urban nature?
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Dr. Lucia Alexandra Popartan is an environmental social scientist, researcher at the University of Girona, LEQUIA research group. In her work, she has explored the contested politics of water and environmental technologies in cities, from a political ecology perspective.
(opens in a new window)luciaalexandra.popartan@udg.edu
Enric Cassú Camps is an anthropologist and philosophy student dedicated to advancing the agroecological transition through the Milfulles Association. Engaged across academic, cultural, and political spheres, he works to build alternative socio-economic models grounded in principles of social and environmental justice. He collaborated with the C-NEWTRAL study visit in Girona.
(opens in a new window)enric25@gmail.com
Cities are multispecies (or ‘more-than-human’) spaces: they are entangled ecosystems where plants, animals, and non-living elements interact with human life in complex ways. For too long, urban planning has been designed primarily for humans, often at the expense of the nonhuman life that shares our streets, parks, and waterways. Indeed, historically, cities have been structured around human convenience, marginalizing or even eradicating species deemed inconvenient. From the displacement of urban foxes to the paving of riverbeds with concrete, much of modern urban development has operated on the assumption that nature must be managed or contained. Yet, nature constantly resists these constraints. Green walls sprout from abandoned buildings, rivers carve new routes, and species once thought to belong only to rural landscapes adapt and thrive in city spaces. What if, instead of fighting against these natural processes, and species, we worked with them as “companions” (to use (opens in a new window)Donna Haraway’s words)? In this sense, nature-based solutions (NbS) have been hailed as a panacea to many urban malaises. By integrating ecosystems into urban design, cities can become more resilient, biodiverse, and sustainable: urban forests and rewilding projects would provide habitat for wildlife while cooling cities and improving air quality; constructed wetlands and green roofs would naturally filter water and reduce flood risks; community-led food gardens promote human-nature connections while pursuing urban food sovereignty. However, NbS have been also criticized for relying on neoliberal, utilitarian ideas about nature, while ignoring the agency and rights of nonhumans in urban spaces ((opens in a new window)Kronenberg, 2025). A shift in perspective is emerging, one that challenges urban planners to re-signify nature in the city (for a review, see, for instance (opens in a new window)Edwards et al 2023). For example, instead of viewing trees solely as carbon sinks, or urban ‘furniture’, we might recognize their role in urban storytelling, as markers of history, culture, and multispecies memory; instead of framing urban waterways as just infrastructures, they would be dynamic spaces where human and nonhuman lives intersect.
Beyond ecology: the politics of urban nature
A sustainable, ‘carbon-newtral’ city is not just about an ecological shift, it also prompts a political one. Who gets to decide what natures, humans and non-humans, are allowed in the city? How can we ensure that NbS benefit all urban inhabitants? These decisions about which species are welcomed and which are removed reflect inherent power dynamics. In many cities, the obsession with orderly spaces has ended up suppressing all kinds of “weeds”, despite the fact that may play important ecological roles. Elsewhere, humans are the ones being rooted out from neighborhoods they have long called home, as rewilding projects and (opens in a new window)green boosterism are impacting housing affordability. For instance, in Girona, the C-NEWTRAL study visit highlighted the tensions between the communities advocating for the establishment of a natural park and the Roma community, who have been occupying the same space illegally for decades. There is no easy answer to the question “who has the right to the city”? A more-than-human perspective simply challenges us to rethink urban planning as a process of negotiation rather than domination and come up with more equalitarian ways of designing green spaces. It also invites us to find more creative methods of researching, sensing and ultimately living with the city: from walking and listening to the rhythms of urban bird populations to reconnecting through performativity and art-based practices. A moral gaze that includes nature as a political subject is relevant for projects like C-NEWTRAL: as our doctoral researchers embark on their quest for a greener and more just city, it is important to consider that cities are already multispecies habitats where many forms of life should have a place and a say.