Milan City Hall is filled with birdsong as pigeons, frogs, goldfish and beetles scurry to their seats.
They are gathering for the first Parliament of Living Species, hoping to convince policymakers to consider them when making decisions about what to build and where in Italy’s second biggest city.
Each of the fifty animals – voiced by masked human representatives and selected for their vulnerability to urban development – calls Milan home, residing in its buildings, parks and waterfront areas.
A representative of the swifts decries the demolition of the San Siro Stadium, which thousands of his species use as a nesting ground. Snubbed by UEFA for the Champions League finals match and Euro 2032, the football ground is on the City Council’s chopping block due to an unsustainable rise in management and maintenance costs.
A fox pipes up on behalf of the underground dwellers to advocate for green corridors to be prioritised over new surface parking. And the reopening of the Navigli canals – paved over in the late 1920s when railways made them obsolete – is a subject of fierce debate. A coypu – a large, semi-aquatic rodent – is excited at the prospect of a new watery home; a representative of small mammals stubbornly opposes the creation of new urban barriers.
While the topics are serious, the meeting has a comedic tone, allowing the city’s human guardians a playful and collaborative space to imagine the concerns of its voiceless inhabitants.
Advocating for more harmonious coexistence between humans and animals
A collaboration between the Urban Planning Laboratory of the Polytechnic University of Milan, the Piccolo Teatro di Milano and the City of Milan, the initiative is a continuation of the Animals in the City project, which took over the Fondation Cartier contemporary art museum in Paris earlier this year.
In the French exhibition, designer Andrea Branzi and University of Milan professor and vertical gardens architect Stefano Boeri – the creative minds behind the project – explored how urban planning could foster a more harmonious coexistence between humans and wildlife.
It featured playful collages where unexpected animals were digitally overlaid on images of Paris monuments and boulevards to generate a new vision of the city.
Building on this, the latest instalment in Milan is part exhibition, part research project, exploring how urban planning can be more sensitive to the needs of the city’s permanent and migratory animal species.
Giving ‘invisible’ animals a voice
The Parliament’s organisers hope participants will leave with a greater sensitivity to the needs of urban species, and will consider them when making decisions that affect the entire ecosystem.
“The opportunity to create a space that gives voice to the often invisible creatures that coexist with us in Milan, besides helping us recognise the multitude of non-human life present in the urban space, can contribute to a more informed approach to the major decisions that affect the future of our cities,” says Stefano Boeri.
This could include the “courageous choice” of turning certain places in Milan, such as the former Marchiondi Spagliardi complex – a brutalist ‘school of life’ for disadvantaged youth designed by architect Vittoriano Viganò in the 1950s and abandoned in the ‘80s – into “hubs for the protection and enhancement of urban biodiversity”, suggests Matteo Moscatelli, who helped to coordinate the event.
Restoring abandoned buildings and degraded ecosystems back to their natural states can “help reduce conflicts between humans and non-domesticated species and enrich the city's ecological heritage”, he argues.
“The city, as an inclusive place, is and must increasingly be a space capable of welcoming and protecting the animal world,” says Elena Grandi, Councillor for the Environment and Green Spaces of the Municipality of Milan. “Our space is also their space, which is why we must protect this great heritage of biodiversity."
