Wayshowing, wayfinding and waysharing: Designing multispecies encounters in urban landscapes

Abstract

This exposition reports on two creative wayfinding projects, and a ‘waysharing’ walk, which all aim to understand cities as sites of coexistence between humans and other species. In the first section, we compare two projects that present wayfinding as a mode of storytelling, creating opportunities for noticing how we coexist with particular plants and animals in the city of Sydney. The first project, Type Trails, reveals the hidden logic of the way we find our way around inner Sydney by visualising three different memory lines: an Aboriginal trade pathway (now George Street), the original coastline of Sydney Cove, and the tank stream. The project layers multiple datasets – including distribution of tree and wildflower species – geospatially along these lines, using the mapping platform Mapbox. In the second project, Nearby Nature, guided walks through different parts of Sydney introduce participants to a range of observation, sketching and storytelling activities which aim to foster a sense of care for the multiple plant and animal species we share urban environments with. In the second section, we report on a shared walk undertaken by the authors to find intersecting narratives, approaches and values underpinning the two projects. We document the walk in the form of a journey map, which documents the multi-species encounters and insights we experienced. The walk and creation of the journey map led to a series of considerations for actively noticing entangled coexistence in urban landscapes. We name this method for collaborating on practice-based research projects ‘waysharing’. We conclude by advocating for the value of narrative approaches to wayfinding and waysharing in cities: such approaches provide opportunities for people to move through a familiar environment but see it anew, noticing coexistence with other species (here, plants or birds), as a kind of urban imaginary that might help people ‘become knowledgeable’ about the more than human aspects of their urban landscapes. In this paper, we are specifically imagining the city of Sydney as a landscape of multispecies coexistence, as a way to decentre humans as the primary ‘pedestrians’ of the city.