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Paper short abstract

This paper combines multispecies ethnographic research with political ecology to examine ambivalent human-pigeon relations as historically situated practices of commoning. I argue that through artistic design practices complexities of urban coexistence and urban possibilities can be explored.

Paper long abstract

The feral pigeon is a polarizing species in urban areas. While often dismissed as a nuisance, the bird shares a deep history of entanglement with humans: serving as a messenger, food source, and even military asset. Although their direct economically utility has faded, feral pigeons continue to generate labour through urban design adaptions, population control, and infrastructure maintenance. This paper investigates these ambivalences and interactions as historically situated practices of commoning and as negotiated efforts towards urban coexistence.

Based on ongoing research in Klagenfurt (Austria), this contribution combines interviews, multisensory walks, and hands-on eco-design workshops with citizens. These methods reveal how commoning practices are enacted and experienced through “storying” with the feral pigeon, facilitating a making and re-making of embodied relational meaning.

Interventions via artistic design create spaces of friction, prompting reflection on scientific knowledge, embodied perception and affective responses. Challenges of commoning, like competing values, shape human-pigeon relations. Rather than idealizing multispecies coexistence these stories created embrace existing ambivalences. This paper explores how design-based methods can be a tool to reimagining multispecies coexistence in the city.