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Short abstract:

We use speculative storytelling to present the perspectives of different multispecies characters in a river ecology to rethink more-than-human smart cities and open up new possibilities for designing with urban data.

Long abstract:

In this talk we approach the context of an urban river as a site for reimagining designing smart cities. We use speculative storytelling and fabulation to explore urban data from the perspective of diverse non-human characters in a river ecology, including carp, algae, mayfly, pollution, cars, blue tit and the river itself. We take a flood event as a starting point and show how the different data relations between different species/characters surfaces their interdependencies and opens up new ways to approach the smart city. Through the river ecology we tell braided stories in first person of different inter-related species through time and space, which are changing due to climate change and human-activity. By presenting these intimate and personal stores of interconnection we show how some species adapt (or don’t). We use this creative storytelling as a design method to surface new way to think and make multispecies urbanism and approach data in smart cities.

We offer this talk as an experiment for designers to tackle multispecies data and smart cities in a new way. One thing we anticipate arising through this process is that through paying attention to non-humans we can learn from them, as has been shown in indigenous wisdoms (e.g. Drinkable Rivers, 2023; Wall Kimmerer, 2020).