The human version is one of the many life forms that are found in the city. Perhaps it is the loudest and most visible, the one that needs the greatest systems of representation; yet, we insist, metropolitan environments are made up of multiple biodiverse densities.

Apart from the different forms of captivity, there are uses of the territory that have nothing to do with the productive order and the boundaries that derive from it. Flocks that cross the skyline with no reverence for architectural singularity, species that find their particular oases in the depths of the sea, lepidoptera whose aerial sorties question industrial frenzy, and hedgehogs and bats that restore to cities their ancestral origins.

A significant sector of contemporary thinking has flagged up animality as the great philosophical theme of the 21st century. In another sense, climate change has urgently tabled the extent to which we need to rethink our extractivist relationships with nature, the ways in which we relate to the rest of the species that inhabit the planet.

Flora and fauna are not window dressing for cities; they are residents that are sometimes more qualified, more legitimate and more accurate than the ones who plan urban stereotypes.