Designing Multispecies Neighbourhoods in Urban Seascapes : Placemaking and Storytelling

This book offers a unique practice–led investigation into the complexities of multispecies placemaking, design, and storytelling in urban seascapes—drawing on experiences from the Oslofjord, the Skagerrak, Muolkkut in Finnmárku County (Northern Norway), and the Atlantic coast of California.

Designing Multispecies Neighbourhoods in Urban Seascapes offers a unique practice–led investigation into the complexities of multispecies placemaking, design, and storytelling in urban seascapes—drawing on experiences from the Oslofjord, the Skagerrak, Muolkkut in Finnmárku County (Northern Norway), and the Atlantic coast of California. Taking a cross–disciplinary approach, the book provides a nuanced account of the ecological and social functions of urban rewilding, and of how interspecies perspectives inform art, community building, and urban and societal planning. Opening with a prologue, it invites the reader into multispecies worlds, setting the stage for the conceptual terrain and approach taken. Divided into three parts, the first addresses topics that seek to connect knowledge between land and sea, and the development of viable marine neighbourhoods. The second critically engages with the practice of interspecies relations through four stories—two authored by invited contributors—offering reflections on practical experiences of more–than–human care and place–stories. The third brings together applied perspectives on rewilding, including multispecies user surveys, a new vocabulary for living shorelines, and other tools for navigating multispecies futures in urban seascapes. Taking an environmental humanities approach, the book builds a bridge between knowledge from marine science and ecological engineering, landscape architecture and art, and nature–based co–learning to open new and productive ways of thinking about the interspecies perspective in urban seascapes. This will be a fascinating read for scholars, researchers and upper–level students in landscape architecture, marine science and ecology, societal planning, urban development, environmental design, art, and environmental humanities.