Reinventing the City: A workshop on habitecture for wildlife
Sue Ruddick, Professor, Geography and Planning, University of Toronto
Presentation title: “Urban wildlife and rhythms of the city”
In this presentation Sue Ruddick explores the city as a polyrhythmic space, how this shared space between humans and wildlife is choreographed by infrastructures, and how, in being more attentive to the rhythms of all life in the city, we might better coexist with our non-human cohabitants.
Ramsey Affifi, Professor University of Edinburgh
Presentation title: “Some considerations on a biosemiotic pedagogy for design”
All designed objects present and constrain opportunities for learning in those that encounter them. To date, we have scarcely considered the implicit curricula likely learned through the technologies, infrastructure, housing, and other elements of our built environments. A pedagogical approach to technology would seek explicitly to uncover and challenge such implicit curricula, to actively redesign elements which are deemed miseducative, and to foster such capacities in students. However, as humans come to increasingly occupy urban spaces, the flourishing of urban biological diversity becomes a pressing issue. Because learning is ubiquitous across the biological world, a pedagogical reconstruction of design is therefore not limited to considerations of how humans may interact with existing and novel objects. An integrated approach to urban conservation would therefore suggest that those exploring the semiotic worlds of other species also collaborate with designers in order to produce things that promote learning interactions that we deem ethical.
John Hadidian, Senior Scientist Wildlife, The Humane Society of the United States
Presentation title: “Wild Animals, People and Cities: conflict and coexistence”
In this presentation John Hadidian explores human wildlife relationships in Washington D.C.
Jamie Lorimer, Associate Professor, Geography, University of Oxford
Presentation title: “Is Urban rewilding and oxymoron?”
In this presentation Jamie Lorimer draws on his current work on wildlife exploring the politics of rewilding a conservation area and attachments to urban wildlife in the city – with an emphasis on bugs and beetles.