Stadt und Landschaft im Klimawandel

Climate change calls for a fundamental rethinking of how we understand cities: urban environments are not exclusively human habitats but are co-produced by a multitude of non-human organisms. Against this backdrop, the seminar explores how cities can be conceptualized and planned as multispecies living environments under the conditions of climate and biodiversity crises.

As part of an intensive block seminar, students will collaborate with the artist collective Club Real on the project “Vienna – City of Living Beings,” which narrates urban history from the perspectives of plants, animals, fungi, and microorganisms. The project aims to make the entanglement of human and non-human life visible and to highlight the importance of biodiversity for the future of the city.

Starting from the premise that the history of a city remains incomplete without the perspectives of other species, the seminar investigates the agency of diverse organisms and their contribution to shaping shared urban habitats.

Students will research selected organisms in Vienna, considering their historical, cultural, and ecological dimensions, and produce texts that can serve as the basis for artistic audio formats. In doing so, the course experiments with translating scientific knowledge into narrative forms accessible to a broader public.

Key questions include:

• How does climate change transform relationships between human and non-human urban inhabitants?

• What role does biodiversity play in fostering resilient and climate-adaptive cities?

• How can urban transformation be narrated from more-than-human perspectives?

• Which new planning paradigms emerge when cities are understood as shared habitats for multiple species?

• How are climate justice, social justice, and multispecies coexistence interconnected?

At the core of the seminar is independent reflection and the ability to think across complex, interconnected systems. Students will formulate a central hypothesis on climate transformation and develop it further in a scientifically argued thesis paper.

Contemporary examples from research, planning, and artistic practice will serve as a basis for deriving implications for future strategies in urban and open space development.