Envisioning Urban Futures: More-Than-Human Cities
More-Than-Human Cities Expo
Envisioning Urban Futures in Hunt Library on January 28, 2026, featured an expo of ideas and projects related to the theme of more-than-human cities.
Installation: SpacePants’ Universal Translator
Location: Teaching & Visualization Lab
How do we share our ideas with everyone involved in our future cities? What conversations can we have in communion with our fellow more-than-human dwellers and builders around our collective habitation? Join SpacePants (Jennifer Beattie and Diana Wade) in an exploratory interactive performance with a video installation by Jennifer Bewerse as we discover different pathways for understanding those around us. (Read more about SpacePants’ Universal Translator.)
Exhibits
Location: Emerging Issues Commons
Sponge City Ofrenda
This year, the landscape architecture community lost a giant. Kongjian Yu, the founder of Turenscape and the visionary mind behind the “Sponge City” concept, spent his life healing the relationship between cities and nature. To honor his passing and celebrate his enduring legacy, we present the Sponge City Ofrenda.
While the ofrenda is a traditional Mexican altar used to welcome spirits back to the realm of the living, we have adapted this celebratory format to spotlight Yu’s global impact. This cross-cultural tribute connects his philosophy of working with nature—rather than against it—to the elemental roots of the ofrenda.
Visitors will discover an installation where images of Yu’s work nestle among marigolds, and where water—the central element of his career—flows freely. This exhibit is not just a memorial; it is a call to action aligned with our theme, More-Than-Human Cities, reminding us that our urban futures must be permeable, resilient, and deeply connected to the earth.
Future Bird-Friendly Cities
This exhibit includes information about Lights Out for Birds (Brian O’Shea, NC Museum of Natural Sciences), Pitstop for the Birds (Sadie Walters), and recommendations for future bird-friendly cities. (Jin Bai, New Hope Bird Alliance, and Gloria Gao, UNC Chapel Hill Avian Society)
Urban Bats and Habitat
Learn about bats in North Carolina and on campus, plus how simple bat boxes can help promote bat habitat in urban areas. (Carla Davis, University Sustainability Office, and Dawn Rodriguez-Ward, Climate and Sustainability Academy)
The Predator Next Door: How to Deal with Urban Coyotes
This poster presentation about coyote-human conflict highlights management strategies that have worked and not worked and solicits new ideas. (Roland Kays, College of Natural Resources)
The First Engineers: The Importance of Beavers in Urban Greenscapes
Beavers were engineering resilient and diverse ecosystems long before humans built cities. This exhibit invites visitors to explore North Carolina examples of how beavers co-adapt to the built environment and act as co-designers of urban greenscapes—slowing water, creating habitat, and reshaping ecological futures. Learn how understanding beaver geomorphology can help us imagine more-than-human cities. (Karl Wegmann, College of Sciences)
City of Raleigh: Rooted in Resilience
As a “Biophilic City,” the City of Raleigh has developed and implemented many biophilic (nature-related) plans, policies, and programs that connect community with nature, improve water quality, and enhance resilience amid ongoing impacts of climate change. For example, Green Stormwater Infrastructure, or GSI, preserves nature, soil, and waterways, and mimics nature by managing, treating, and reducing stormwater runoff. Join Raleigh Stormwater and Parks to learn more about how the City is implementing GSI in exciting ways, about planning and development initiatives such as our Pre-Development Assessment Plans, natural resource management initiatives, and many other innovative programs that help us connect people and nature through experiences, education, and conservation to create strong, healthy, sustainable communities and environment.
Campus Nature and Wellness
Tom Skolnicki (University Landscape Architect) and Aaron Hipp (Faculty, College of Natural Resources) share the campus landscape framework plan, the campus greenspace map, and new research linking campus greenspaces, biodiversity, and human health.
Mosquitoes in Cities of the Future: Evolution, Diversity, and Disease
Our research has documented effects of urbanization and human behavior on mosquito abundance, diversity, pathogen transmission, and evolution. How can this knowledge be leveraged to avoid some of the harmful impacts of mosquitoes through informed design for cities of the future? This exhibit invites attendees to learn about mosquito biology and explore the importance of interdisciplinary interactions between epidemiologists, mosquito biologists, urban planners, sociologists, and public health policy experts. (Meredith Spence Beaulieu, Michael Reiskind, and Martha Burford Reiskind, Global One Health Academy)
NC State’s Story of Soil
The Agroecology Education Farm grows vegetables for the campus dining halls. The dining halls compost food scraps and send them to the university compost facility. The compost produced at the compost facility is then used at the Agroecology Education Farm to amend the beds and build healthy soil. The cyclic relationship between the farm, dining halls, and compost facility illustrate how the “More-Than-Human Cities” concept can look in action. (Sara Snyder, Agroecology Farm)
Urban Pollinators
The Bee Collective—a collaboration between architecture and ecology—is developing modular bee hotels using North Carolina clay, cob, and rammed earth to support wild pollinators within the urban campus landscape. These earthen-based designs serve not only twig-nesting bees but also ground-nesting species, which make up the majority of wild bees yet are overlooked by traditional wooden bee hotels. This exhibit showcases material samples and prototypes from an NC State Advanced Architecture Studio and a Sustainability Fund Grant project reimagining habitats for our more-than-human neighbors in the built environment. (Shawn Protz and architecture students, College of Design; Em Trentham and Elsa Youngsteadt, Department of Applied Ecology).
Forest Aerobiome
By 2050, most of us will live in cities—breathing in conditioned air. Our built environment is devoid of microbial biodiversity due to our harsh urban landscape, over-engineered HVAC systems, non-living compatible materials, and our cleaning regimens. Forests offer another blueprint. What if we could design microbial air for the indoors that is alive, symbiotic, and restorative? Forests release aromatic phytoncides and host a living aerobiome—the airborne community of bacteria and fungi drifting from soils, bark, and leaves that have benefits to humanity including the reduction of stress. This exhibit is the result of a workshop material exploration with design and architecture students to envision microbes as a material to introduce and design into the built environment.
Howl About Trees? Exploring Urban Forest Management
Join Brooke Costanza, NC State’s Urban Forester, for an engaging look at the urban forest. Learn how trees are managed across NC State, and explore innovative approaches to planting and sustaining healthy trees in challenging urban environments.
Biophilic Tactical Urbanism in Schools
This project explores how the concept of “temporary nature” might inform a more-than-human future in cities. Based on principles of tactical urbanism — lighter, quicker, low-cost interventions intended to spur long-term changes in planning and design, researchers explored the impacts of biophilic tactical urbanism on insects, the heat island effect, and human perception through a full-scale intervention in a public elementary school (James Barnes: Faculty, The Natural Learning Initiative, College of Design & Audrey Barnes: Faculty & Dept Head of Graphic Design & Industrial Design, College of Design).
Special Collections: Archiving Local Greenways
Explore a sampling of original archival records from NC State University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center that document the landscape architects and community organizations behind Raleigh and Triangle greenways. Learn more about Special Collections’ landscape architecture holdings, which highlight the vision, advocacy, and creative processes that shaped these public landscapes.
More-Than-Human Design and Games
Location: Technology Showcase
More-Than-Human Design: Envisioning Alternative and Speculative Urban Futures
Focusing on the principles of More-Than-Human Design, sophomore students in Valeria Lopez Torres’ studio course, Graphic and Experience Design, spent six weeks challenging the anthropocentric view of the design process and were tasked with using design as a tool to ask complex problems about human impact on urban ecosystems and imagine and envision preferred futures where non-human perspectives are integral to the built environment. By adopting a systems-thinking approach, students learned to refocus their design lens to anticipate consequences on the natural and more-than-human world. The resulting projects—from experience design and activism, to creative artistic interpretation—offer alternative, inventive, and ecologically mindful approaches to coexistence in the urban landscape.
FutureScape: Play Your Way to Climate Solutions
Explore North Carolina’s climate challenges and solutions through the serious board game FutureScape. Learn how the game supports real-world resilience planning, and add your ideas or experiences to help shape future directions. (Rebecca Ward, Climate and Sustainability Academy, and Georgina Sanchez, Center for Geospatial Analytics)
Beat the Heat
Learn how everyone has a role to play in mitigating the impact of urban heat islands and building climate resilience through this role-playing serious game. (Ashton Merck, North Carolina Museum of Life and Science)
Understand Urban Heat and Design a Cooler Future
This activity explores how building materials and urban design create heat islands that affect all living things, not just humans. Come explore heat maps across our state, learn the key mechanisms at play and add your ideas to our cool city lab designing a cooler future for all residents of North Carolina. (Allison Whitaker, State Climate Office)
Designing for Departure: A Reverse City Builder for More-Than-Human Futures
Terra Nil is a “reverse city builder” video game where the goal is to restore a lifeless landscape into a thriving ecosystem—and then dismantle every human structure. Unlike conventional urban sims, Terra Nil centers ecological regeneration: replanting forests, purifying water, and reintroducing wildlife and microbes. This interactive station explores how game design can model more-than-human futures rooted in repair, not expansion.
Posters
Location: Emerging Issues Commons
Stop the Strikes: Lessons from Tackling Bird-Window Collision on College Campuses and Recommendations for Future Bird-Friendly Cities
Jin Bai (New Hope Bird Alliance) and Gloria Gao (UNC Chapel Hill Avian Society)
Every year, millions of birds are killed by glass windows in the US. We analyzed the collision data from City Bird and iNaturalist to quantify the scope of this issue on college campuses in the Triangle area. Then, combined with real-world advocacy experiences, we seek to propose the solutions to prevent bird-window collisions on individual, campus, and municipal levels.
MYCO-LUMINA
Hassan Pishahang (Florida Atlantic University) and Maryam Badiei (Design)
What if light could grow—cultivated, not built? Mycolumina (from myco, fungus, and lumina, light) explores the poetic potential of mycelium in a world urgently rethinking materials. We challenged its limits—not just as structure, but as a vessel for intricacy, symbolism, and atmosphere. Inspired by traditional geometry, this work invites nature to speak through form and shadow, revealing a future where beauty and sustainability grow together.
More-Than-Human from the Start: How Sheep Made the First Mesopotamian Cities
Kate Grossman (Sociology and Anthropology)
Studies of early urbanism have failed to take into account the multispecies nature of cities. But, an explicit engagement with caprine behavior can help explain how the sociality of herd animals might underpin the world’s first cities. A case study based on a study of archaeologically-recovered animal bones from the site of Hamoukar, in northeastern Syria, illustrates the potential of taking a multispecies approach to understanding the origins and nature of early urban sites.
Children’s Fiction as the Future: Crafting an Adventure Atlas
Bethany Cutts (Parks, Recreation and Tourism Managment) and Susanna Klingenberg
The Adventure Atlas is a work-in-progress children’s chapter book inspired by Raleigh’s parks, rivers, and real planning decisions, where a group of third-graders discover a magical map and begin to see the city as full of more-than-human life. This interactive poster and live reading invites academics and families to share stories and places they love. Help imagine how children, nature, and communities can shape Raleigh’s future together.
Wild Neighbors: The Shape of Biodiversity Within Cities
Alex Jensen (NC Museum of Natural Science)
While the broad-scale patterns of urbanization-biodiversity relationship are fairly well understood, we lack finer-scale knowledge about how our footprint shapes the biodiversity around us. By combining research grade observations from iNaturalist (a citizen science platform) with spatial data on buildings, we investigate how biodiversity changes as you move further away from humans. We test whether species traits can explain variation in distance with the ultimate goal of informing how urban planners can support as much biodiversity as possible.
Assessing Urban Forests: A Systematic Review of Data Availability for Urban Forest Management Efforts in the Southeastern US
Maggio Laquidara (Forestry and Environmental Resources)
Even though they provide essential infrastructural, social, and economic benefits to urban communities, rapid urbanization in the Southeastern United States continues to drive the loss of natural forests. Despite their vulnerability to human activities, natural disturbances, and climate change, regional assessments of urban forest management remain limited. This study examines the practices of 160 Southeastern U.S. cities with populations over 50,000, focusing on species composition, existing management efforts, and future challenges tied to climate projections and disturbance regimes.
Phytoremediation: A Beautiful Approach to Cleaning Urban Pollution
Lydia Gillan (Biochemistry)
Some plants can accumulate, break down, or stabilize contaminants, providing an affordable and sustainable method for cleaning up pollution in cities before it spreads through the environment. This technique, called phytoremediation, differs from other remediation methods in that it preserves, and even improves, the quality of reclaimed soil, promoting biodiversity and making it less susceptible to erosion and drought. Urban planners can leverage phytoremediation to address pollution while creating healthier, more climate-resilient, and more beautiful cities.
Transforming an Abandoned Island into a Thriving Public Place for All
Donghwan Moon (Design)
Nodeul Island, a public park in Seoul designed by the presenter, demonstrates how cities can become more sustainable, resilient, livable, and healthy by including human, non-human species and ecological systems. Once an abandoned artificial island in the city’s main river, the project transformed the site into a open park with a vision integrating history, culture, and ecology. By treating the island as a shared habitat, the project shows how urban design can support biodiversity, climate resilience, and long-term public well-being.
Biophilic Design
Students at Wake STEM Early College engaged in a month-long design challenge to take a ~40 acre tract of land and designed a community that leveraged ecosystem services as amenities instead of treating the natural environment as an obstacle. During their work, students were advised by local planners and engineers. Students shared the project process, design products, and key learning outcomes from having participated in this learning experience.
Foundations for Change: Urban Soil Phage Exploration as a Platform for Education and Women’s Computational Training
Maria Touceda Suarez (Bioinformatics Research Center)
Bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria—regulate microbial populations and drive horizontal gene transfer in soil ecosystems, yet their role in urban environments remains poorly understood. Urban stressors—including heavy metals and altered land use—may fundamentally restructure phage-bacteria dynamics with consequences for soil health and nutrient cycling. We present an integrated research-education model that leverages authentic scientific discovery to investigate urban soil viral ecology while building computational capacity for women in STEM.