AnimAl-Aided design – using a species’ life-cycle to improve open space planning and conservation in cities and elsewhere

Biodiversity underlies many of the ecosystem services demanded by humans. For cities, the design of ‘green infrastructures’ or ‘nature-based solutions’ has been proposed to maintain the provisioning of these services and the preservation of biodiversity. It is unclear, however, how such green infrastructure can be implemented, given existing planning practices that generally ignore biodiversity. Urban open spaces are normally designed by landscape architects with a primary focus on plants, aesthetic design and functionality for human users. As a consequence, conservation of species only plays a minor role, in fact, protected animals are often considered detrimental to the design, e.g. when the need to conserve a protected species demands modifications of a building project. Conversely, conservationists are often in favor of protected areas, also in cities, with little access for humans and no human design. We propose ‘Animal-Aided Design’ (AAD) as a methodology for the design of urban open spaces, to integrate conservation into open space planning. The basic idea of AAD is to include the presence of animals in the planning process, such that they are an integral part of the design. For AAD, the desired species are chosen at the beginning of a project. The requirements of the target species then not only set boundary conditions for the design, but also serve as an inspiration for the design itself. The aim of AAD is to establish a stable population at the project site, or contribute to population growth of species with larger habitats. AAD thus allows a combination of good urban design with species conservation. We illustrate our approach with designs for urban spaces in Munich.