Historically, nature has been understood both as a great oppositional force to be protected against and as an endless source of materials for human expansion. In the best cases today, we relate to nature as something to be taken care of and preserved from our activities. But beyond our sapiens-centered conceptions, the notion of nature can be more concretely understood as a network of interdependent species which we are a part of.

We have inherited this loaded conception of nature. As a result, we are facing a crises of attention towards non-human living beings. What can we do to reframe our definition and everyday relationship with what we call nature? In what ways can we design our environments to reactivate biodiversity and cohabitate with other species? What are the boundaries between what we call natural, artificial, and original?

This third edition of Unfold interrogates our inherited conceptions of nature and explores key questions about nature’s role in the next urban era.

Almost anyone will instinctively recognize the shape of a logo, even from far away or in small print at the bottom of a poster. An American study in 2014 showed that North-American children, ages 4 to 10, could recognize and distinguish thousands of different brands instantly at first glance — yet were not able to identify the leafs of ten plants from their local environments.¹

The very mechanism of our perceptions has changed. Our fundamental sensitivity to recognize patterns in our environment has shifted toward manufactured goods. This replacement is only accelerating as our attention becomes monetized and the economy of attention booms. We are building an environment around us where everything wants our attention all the time – and where the first-hand experience of nature is increasingly excluded.

Nature itself is shrinking in size and growing more distant. More and more we are losing touch with the diversity of species we share and inhabit our spaces with. Globally, 55% of people now live in urban areas.² In most Western countries, this is even higher (France for ex: 61%).² By the turn of the century, Americans already spent 87% of their time indoors.³ Today, kids only spend an average of 4–7 minutes outdoors per day while spending an average of 7½ hours a day on electronics.⁴

With our lifestyles becoming increasingly urban, our collective imagination and experience of wild nature is becoming entirely framed. We are forgetting nature – let alone its wildness. Our experiences increasingly rely on the same filtered and beautified narratives of nature documentaries and children’s books. Nature has merged into the background, a decor, the grey noise beneath our activities. We have reduced it almost exclusively to serving as a resource, which also happens to be pleasant to look at on a stroll.

This detached relationship has serious consequences for our ecosystems. An estimated 421 million birds have disappeared in Europe in the last thirty years, while over 3 billion have disappeared in North America since 1970 – a quarter of the total population.^{5, 6} Today, more than one in seven bird species is threatened with extinction or has already disappeared (1,360 of the 9,990 known species).⁷ Of these species, 138 are extinct and 15 are considered critically endangered.⁷ Overall, 40.3% of bird species are considered to be in decline today.⁷ Some species are more vulnerable than others, especially ones dependent on insects for food: according to National Geographic reporting, over the last 30 years, the standardization of once rural landscapes and industrial production of food has wiped out 80% of Europe’s flying insect population.⁸ Our deficit of attention toward nature has made us forget that we share our territories with more species than our own.

[The ideal city] is welcoming not only to human beings, but also to other sentient beings on our planet.¹⁰

— Steph Wade
The Ideal City, SPACE10