Urban Biosphere and Public Participation
The Challenge of Mediating the Complexity (and Messiness) of the Urban Biosphere Vision.
Establishing the conditions for a growing biodiversity in urban areas is a challenging process that requires mediation and an expansion of active collaboration by the public. The main challenge here is a shift in perception, which needs to be expressed and mediated, and understood and internalized by the public. The challenge emerges from the call for a paradigm-shift, from a human-centered way of thinking, relating to function and efficiency, to a new more-than-human perception that includes all species as possessing personal rights, and where humans are just one species in a large biodiverse world. While humans are privileged with political power, which dominates and affects biodiversity, the challenge is to shift this and the overall public mindset to the cause of a Commons of all species. Accepting and adjusting to the messiness of nature in its multiple, complex habitats and ecosystems, is an extended process of learning through experience.
Bridging the gaps of modern perceptions, pre-conceptions and behavior, requires that one engage, hands-on, with communities that experience urban daily life and are willing to expand their understanding of the urban biosphere. As possible methodologies of engagement, Public Participatory methods suit the challenge, since those who stand to be impacted by such a paradigm-shift have a right to be involved in the decision-making process. This can develop into a local public contribution that can sensitively influence and shape the necessary transitions. Public participation allows for an extended process and a learning journey of the new realities that a progressive urban biosphere perspective will bring and its affect on community life.
The messiness of biodiversity is evident in the soil-burrowing of the wild boars, the foxes’ hunt for prey, the grazing by the rabbits, the courtship sounds of the deers, the screeching of the crows, the waterways-interventions of the beavers and much more. The human challenge is to adjust to nature’s phenomena, in the same way that nature found ways to adjust to human presence and interventions. It is to fully accept that with nature comes the messiness of other species, a messiness that needs to be recognized and accepted as part of the complexity of biodiversity.
Participatory art and design methodologies are the most promising tools for an extensive hands-on approach, where humans and their communities can engage not only with decision-making but also with the actual creation of new realities that support biodiversity. The language of culture, art and design can bring about unique interpretations that assist in mediating such complex contexts. Culture as defined by R. Buchanan “is not a state, expressed in an ideology or a body of doctrines. It is an activity. Culture is the activity of ordering, disordering and reordering in the search for understanding and for values which guide action.” Participatory Art & Design is on the one hand a process which builds empathy among the participants and on the other hand, a process that can build up solidarity and caring for the non-human others, and which allows for solving substantial challenges in a more holistic fashion. According to Sarkissian and Perglut, because planning affects everyone, it is believed that “those whose livelihoods, environments and lives are at stake should be involved in the decisions which affect them”. Overall, a participatory project can consolidate and empower a given community, therefore building up its resilience, in order to address the unfolding environmental challenges.
The proposed vision of Biosphere Berlin can be seen as a provocation that calls for a responsible and thoughtful action. It is also an attempt to define and refine the participatory, social-ecological toolbox, adapted to a complex urban context. This process is interdisciplinary in nature, requiring a working and collaborating with professionals from diverse fields. This process is rooted in local collaborations, with an extended invitation to join and take part in this unique and essential journey.
David Behar Perahia
