Urban Cohabitation with the Non-Human: Diplomacy or Symbiosis?

The city is a place where human and non-human cross paths without always meeting. Trees line the avenues, weeds crack through asphalt, birds nest in the crevices of buildings. How can we inhabit these spaces without imposing ourselves or fading away? Two proposals emerge, distinct in their approach yet both turning toward the same question: that of relationship.

The Diplomacy of Silent Languages

Baptiste Morizot offers a path where cohabitation hinges on negotiation. It involves listening to what does not speak our language, yet is no less a language. Trees, for instance, communicate differently—through their roots, their leaves, their responses to the seasons. Their silence is not an absence of meaning but another form of expression.

Du bon usage des arbres (Francis Hallé, 2011). Plaidoyer pour l’herboristerie (Thierry Thévenin, 2013).

These references are far from incidental. They point to bodies of knowledge that take the modes of existence of the non-human seriously. Du bon usage des arbres suggests that trees possess a form of intelligence, a way of being in the world that deserves understanding. Plaidoyer pour l’herboristerie reminds us that plants are not mere resources but partners with whom humans have coevolved. Diplomacy, here, consists in recognizing these alterities without reducing them to our categories. It demands distinction before dialogue: a tree is not a human, a weed is not a tool. Their presence in the city is not decoration but an invitation to adjust how we dwell.

This approach does not seek fusion but negotiation. It assumes that each species has its own interests, its own rhythms, and that urban cohabitation must account for them. It does not deny conflict but treats it as an opportunity to find compromise. A tree growing in a sidewalk crack is not an obstacle to eliminate but an interlocutor whose persistence questions our own grip on space.

The Symbiogenesis of Mismatched Kinships

Donna Haraway proposes another path, where cohabitation does not proceed through negotiation but through mutual transformation. For her, the boundaries between species are not fixed lines but zones of contact where new forms of life emerge. The city is not a space where humans and non-humans coexist without touching but a place where their existences intertwine.

To the makers of mismatched kinships

Mismatched kinships refer to these bonds woven outside traditional categories. Kinship is not merely biological but also narrative, affective, practical. It can unite a human and a tree, a city and its pigeons, a garden and its insects. These relationships are not symmetrical, yet they are real: they change those who partake in them.

Haraway does not seek to distinguish in order to dialogue better but to recognize that the boundaries between species are porous. A tree in the city is not an isolated other but an actor in a broader network where humans, plants, animals, and microbes influence one another. Symbiogenesis—the process by which different organisms merge to form new ones—is not a metaphor but a biological and cultural reality. Cities are laboratories of these hybridizations.

This approach does not deny differences but situates them within a continuum. A human who plants a tree does not merely negotiate with it: they participate in a shared history where each transforms the other. Cohabitation is not a contract but a dance whose steps are learned in the doing.

The Common Summit: Shared Space

These two proposals may seem opposed. One insists on distinction, the other on convergence. Yet they converge on one essential point: the city is not human territory but shared space. Whether one chooses to listen to silent languages or weave mismatched kinships, the stakes remain the same: to inhabit without dominating.

Morizot proposes negotiating with what resists our categories. Haraway suggests allowing ourselves to be transformed by what surrounds us. In both cases, the task is to relinquish the illusion of total control. A tree in the city is not an object to manage but a partner with whom to compose. A weed pushing through cobblestones is not a nuisance but a presence that questions our relationship to the ground.

Diplomacy and symbiosis are not solutions but ways of framing the question. How can we live with what is not us without reducing it or dissolving into it? Perhaps the answer lies not in choosing between the two but in their very tension. Distinguishing to listen better, converging without erasing: urban cohabitation demands both.