BiodiverCity, Living Together, is for all of those who consider that the city tells a story; that of a sedimentation process that includes periods that occur within it. Like a palimpsest, it invites us to participate in its perpetual renewal.
Nowadays, cities shelter 50% of the world’s total population and this growing tendency does not appear to cease, since human activities are continuously expanding and demanding more areas, thus natural spaces are each time more scarce within urban spaces. This diminishment in natural green areas means that the already weak existing biotopes present in the city are destroyed, leaving the local animals without a natural habitat and so they find themselves in a hostile and unnatural environment. Hence, these animals have to adapt and take shelter wherever they can, causing them to be unsafe and being feared by humans at such a point that they are often hunted, as they are considered harmful.
It is in 1929 that Belgium punishes acts of cruelty towards animals for the first time in modern legislation, as they consider animals as individuals to be protected. However, it is not until 2012 that awareness is raised towards this subject, as an international group of leading scientists signed the Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness regarding animals. In this document, the participants support the idea that animals are endowed and that humans are part of this list of living creatures, as well as all mammals and birds, thus positioning them on the same level as other living species.
Moreover, on January 28th 2015, after two years of debates in France, the National Assembly finally recognized animals as “cognizant beings”. Thus, some questions arise. What does this advance in matter of civil rights provides us with? Does it change our vision of intensive breeding, slaughter or treatment in laboratories? And furthermore on the matter of social evolution, can we say now that humans and animals can co-exist?
Let’s imagine now the ‘cities of tomorrow’, these cities in which animals and humans can live together, sharing common urban spaces as habitat. A place where animals live within our walls, on top of our roofs, under the streets…wherever they will find shelter and privacy, including all the resources that the city can offer, while actively participating in the welfare of the city. But, how do we bring enough resources for these animals so that they decide to stay in the city?
However, how can we provide these animals with enough ressources so that they can chose to stay in the city?
The project “BiodiverCity” arises as a response to the aforementioned questions, on the matter of how can we as humans live together with animals within urban spaces. The city of Lille in northern France has been chosen for the study, more specifically, the district of Euralille, which represents the junction of different periods of the city within one densely populated area, but especially because it is an archetype of congestion of the artificial.
This publication is the result of the studies of the Master 1 promotion of the Faculté d’architecture, d’ingénieurie architecturale et d’urbanisme, LOCI Tournai, Belgium, as part of ‘The Why Factory’ workshop carried by Architects Winy Maas from MVRDV and Felix Madrazo. The pedagogical system proposed by this workshop is based on the design of a process and systematic research rather than focusing on a project purpose.
To make this education accessible to students, we will project in an undefined future without direct transition within the present, and try to compose a picture of what could be a bio-diverse city. We will use scenarios that will serve as departing hypotheses. In this sample of the world, symbolized by Euralille, we must regard this as an abstraction of our ‘global garden’, in which nature has already reasserted itself. The climate will certainly change, resulting in complex shifts and the city will host flora and fauna as well as human beings who have tried to create models to accommodate and build ecosystems.
We therefore propose to introduce our study, taking into account that at present some elements have remained unanswered voluntarily. These are the notions of temporality, finitude, and the paradox of using a sample we invite you to extrapolate. The systems used to implement our solutions are not yet optimized and designed to an economy of means necessary for the performance of such a project. Furthermore, one must read this book as the record of an on going experiment that attempts to sketch the possible face of a future city, the "BiodiverCITY" built on the traces of the old, but that will host flora, fauna and humans in the future.