Biodiversity within the city: a "Timescape Garden" in Norrköping

Purpose and goal:

Our project addresses the design of urban biodiversity reservoirs/habitat corridors. In such areas, the often-conflicting land use claims of humans and other species must be reconciled. How can visitors experience the life-patterns and habitats of other beings without causing them harm?

In a natural setting, how can we encounter species that are inconspicuous, rare, or wary of contact? How can city dwellers become more attuned to nature’s rhythms and senses of time? Using new landscape design tools, we are proposing ways to encounter diverse plant and animal life in urban green areas.

Expected results and effects:

We are shaping an attractive, inclusive, biodiverse nature area near Norrköping city center, applying and developing new site analysis tools and cross-sectoral methods. Tools/methods help designers identify the precise movement patterns of human and nonhuman beings; read, through dance-based embodied practices, these movements as expressions of motivations/desires; and make landscape design changes that transmit this empathetic knowledge.

In this way we aim to encourage city dwellers to see nature’s inherent value and beauty - a step towards recognizing the rights of nature. Approach and implementation:

At the 3400 m2 site we will test and develop a new tool for biosurveying and rhythmanalysis - AI-based motion analysis - as well as dance-based approaches to landscape analysis. We will use these tools to expand our understanding of the perspectives/experiences of the site’ nonhuman inhabitants, and of various user groups incl. disabled and youth.

We will plant a wildflower garden; expand the trail and path network; introduce a grazed meadow; and design/construct benches and a viewing pavilion. We will measure the effect of design changes on biodiversity, biointensity, and site visits.