The workshop ‘Public Spaces and Voices of the Future: Co-creating Livable and Lively Public Spaces’ imagined an open-air laboratory where a role-playing game reshuffled the deck to give a voice to humans, non-humans… and the inhabitants of 2144!
Today’s decisions don’t only impact the humans they are intended for. They also affect other living beings who are dependent on our choices. These decisions carry long-term consequences—far beyond the few decades typically considered by local planning documents. In the field of urban planning, this is even more evident. All around us, we can see buildings that are several hundred years old, main roads that trace back to Roman routes, pollutants that remain in the soil for centuries, and soil itself, which takes an average of three centuries to form a single centimeter.
In the context of ecological crisis, numerous challenges arise when it comes to designing public spaces that are livable and enjoyable in the near future. How will they withstand extreme weather conditions? How can they become cool and welcoming places for both human and non-human life—and even serve as spaces for biodiversity regeneration in the face of the sixth mass extinction? How can their design and layout contribute to sustainable water management, clean air, and physical and mental well-being? How can they foster social interaction, inclusion, and even a greater appreciation for others, to help build a more peaceful and politically meaningful public space?
To move away from an anthropocentric and short-term vision, we need a new approach. That’s exactly what participants in the workshop were invited to experiment with: a dialogue between humans and non-humans, current and future generations, to reimagine the public spaces in the center of Tilques.
After a welcome by Tilques’ mayor, Patrick Bedague, who introduced his town, around forty participants were randomly divided into three groups: current elected officials, non-human living beings, and inhabitants from the year 2144.
Step one: participants received role cards. The elected officials were assigned responsibilities related to active mobility, economic development, or urban planning. The inhabitants of 2144 took on identities such as teenager, elderly person, woman, or child. The non-humans were represented by characters like a lime tree, a domestic dog, a noctule bat, or a reed warbler (a charming little bird).
Step two: they explored the area around Tilques’ central square—children’s park, parking lot, sidewalks, and alleyways—to identify spaces where their characters felt comfortable, places where they faced difficulties, and areas in need of improvement.
Step three: back indoors after the walk, participants shared how they felt “in their character’s shoes.” Based on this sensory exploration, each group of beings developed proposals for redesigning the village center. The afternoon was devoted to confronting these perspectives: where did their expectations overlap, and where did they diverge when rethinking public spaces?
The groups representing elected officials and future residents naturally emphasized human-centered needs: spaces for social interaction, conviviality, and local commerce. Yet some of their concerns echoed those of the non-human group—like the need to depave surfaces, the value of natural soil paths, and the difficulty of coexisting with cars. This shows that human and non-human interests can indeed converge!
However, some proposals reflected starkly different worldviews. For example, the “non-human” group put forward a bold idea: establishing an international convention for non-humans, along with granting them legal personhood, so their rights could be considered in decision-making. In contrast, the elected officials suggested promoting “nature tourism” by creating a biodiversity museum. While the first approach offered a more egalitarian framework between humans and non-humans, giving voice and rights to the latter, the second took a more traditional route—preserving nature through representation rather than participation.
The question of biodiversity also sparked debate within each group. Should biodiversity be integrated everywhere—even in the central square—to raise public awareness (at the risk of reducing nature to a decorative or symbolic element, like an insect hotel)? Or should wild biodiversity be protected in peripheral areas, free from human presence… and domestic dogs?
Are these two visions compatible—and under what conditions? This was a question worth exploring further, given more time and expert input.
The final part of the afternoon was devoted to reflection, drawing insights for our professional practices. Beyond the very concrete proposals for the village center, the workshop sparked strong emotions—especially for those who had taken on the role of an animal or plant. They appreciated the shift in perspective, which forced them to view everyday public spaces through different eyes, as if for the first time. The role-playing exercise—despite its time constraints and limitations—sparked broader reflections on sustainable and livable planning—or careful planning, to use the term popularized by architect Christine Leconte.
One provocative idea emerged: why not assign economic value to non-human life? Perhaps this is the only way for it to be truly considered in planning decisions.
Another key takeaway: it’s possible to think in terms of synergies between humans and non-humans, rather than fixed interactions. The exercise invites us to consider humans and non-humans as equals—each with their own interests, but all part of the same “biodiversity.”
It also introduced the valuable practice of thinking on a much longer timescale (in this case, the year 2144!), a welcome contrast to the short-term logic that usually dominates future planning.
Participants did point out areas for improvement: future exercises should be based on concrete data to enable more realistic projections, climate forecasts, wildlife trends, demographics, etc. The role-playing should also be embedded in real-life planning or urban development processes, over a longer time horizon. Local decision-makers, in particular, could benefit greatly from this kind of mental “oxygenation”, freeing themselves, even briefly, from the immediate constraints and pressures of public action, which are often disconnected from what will truly matter in 50 or 100 years.
Let’s be bold! If the demos in ancient Athens included only male Roman citizens, and it took until the 20th century to recognize women as full citizens, why not imagine tomorrow’s demos expanded to include future generations, and non-human life?
Judith Ferrando et Théa Disdier-Haumesser
