Multispecies co-Existence: Shaping an Urban Garden in Milan as a Ground for Human and More-than-Human Relationships

Cities are increasingly confronted with the challenge of addressing biodi-versity loss while undergoing profound processes of urban transformation. Despite the long-standing tradition of participatory planning and co-design in urban studies, nature is rarely included as an active stakeholder in deliberative processes, and tools to recognize the rights, agency, and needs of more-than-human species in the co-design and co-production of urban solutions remain limited. This gap is particularly evident in the design of urban green spaces, where biodiversity is often treated as an outcome rather than a participant in decision-making. This chapter aims to advance the understanding of multispecies co-existence as an approach to co-designing urban green spaces. It draws on a concrete case study: the co-design of an urban garden in Milan within a living-lab setting established in 2024 as part of the research activi-ties of the National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC). The approach experimented in the research has seen the combined use of co-design tools to support citizens and local stakeholders in recognizing the rights and stakes of more-than-human species, and of ecological and social monitoring tools, which enabled an assessment of the impacts of the co-design process on both the human and more-than-human species inhabiting the garden. The co-design process generated a learning environ-ment grounded in the recognition of the needs of different species, which allowed the garden to transform into a multispecies arena in which biodiversity is interpreted as an active agent shaping the space. The findings reveal several challenges associated with co-designing for multispecies coexistence, including the crucial contribution of experts in guiding participants to recognize the needs of the species inhabiting the garden, or the presence of institutional representatives in the process which some-times undermined the emergence of innovations. At the same time, the monitoring activities highlight the significant role of the co-designed garden in providing habitat for specific species, while also revealing a high level of user recognition of the garden as a multispecies arena.