Multi-species Urbanism in Future Santa Cruz

By the year 2121, Santa Cruz has transformed into one of the world’s first fully botanical cities, shaped by the socio-ecological theories of the 'cyborg philosopher' Donna Haraway. After decades of climate instability, rising sea levels, and ecological collapse across California, the city abandoned the old idea that humans should dominate nature through endless urban expansion. Instead, Santa Cruz rebuilt itself around Haraway’s concept of multispecies coexistence, where humans, plants, animals, fungi, and technologies exist as interconnected partners within a living ecosystem. The city no longer separates “nature” from “urban life.” Forests grow through neighborhoods, pollinator gardens replace parking lots, and architecture is designed to support birds, insects, and microbial life as much as human residents. Santa Cruz in 2121 is not a clean futuristic machine-city of steel and glass, but a dense green organism where botanical systems form the foundation of everyday life.

Santa Cruz 2121 by the urban futures team

The streets themselves have become multi-species eco-corridors. Elevated pathways woven from biodegradable fungal composites curve between giant coast redwoods and solar canopies covered in climbing jasmine and native California grapevine. Traditional asphalt roads are rare because most transportation occurs through quiet electric tram systems surrounded by dense vegetation that absorbs heat and pollution. Sidewalks are lined with native plants such as yarrow, monkeyflower, sagebrush, and hummingbird sage, creating continuous habitats for bees, butterflies, and migrating birds. Buildings are covered with living skins of mosses, lichens, and succulents that naturally regulate temperature and collect moisture from coastal fog. Rooftops overflow with rooftop orchards containing citrus trees, figs, avocados, and medicinal herbs, while rainwater moves through visible channels filled with reeds and algae that naturally filter waste before it returns to the soil.

In this Haraway-esque imagined future, food production is inseparable from community life. Industrial agriculture disappeared from Santa Cruz decades earlier after severe droughts and soil depletion made monoculture farming unsustainable. In its place, the city developed layered food forests inspired by permaculture and Indigenous Californian ecological knowledge. Every district contains communal gardens where people cultivate native strawberries, artichokes, beans, and drought-resistant fruit trees alongside edible fungi and medicinal plants. Public schools maintain botanical laboratories where children learn to care for seed banks, fungal networks, and pollinator systems rather than simply studying ecology from textbooks. Composting is decentralized and integrated into neighborhoods, with waste transformed into nutrient-rich soil through systems involving worms, microbes, insects, and mushrooms. Haraway’s rejection of human exceptionalism shaped these practices: in 2121, Santa Cruz treats nonhuman life not as a resource but as part of the city’s political and ethical community.

The coastline of Santa Cruz has also radically changed. As sea levels rose throughout the twenty-first century, the city abandoned concrete seawalls and instead restored wetlands, kelp forests, and tidal marshes that could adapt naturally to flooding. Giant zones of salt-tolerant vegetation now stretch along the coast, creating buffers against storms while supporting marine biodiversity. Floating botanical platforms anchored offshore cultivate algae and kelp used for biofuel, medicine, and biodegradable materials. Rather than attempting to “control” nature through massive engineering projects, the city learned to cooperate with ecological processes. This reflects Haraway’s belief that survival depends on adaptation, interdependence, and learning to “stay with the trouble” of environmental crisis rather than imagining total technological mastery over the planet.

Technology still exists in Santa Cruz in 2121, but it functions differently from the extractive technological systems that once dominated nearby Silicon Valley. Artificial intelligence systems monitor soil health, fungal communication networks, and water cycles, helping maintain ecological balance rather than maximizing profit or productivity. Sensors embedded within trees and wetlands track biodiversity and climate conditions in real time, allowing the city to respond collaboratively to environmental change. Sometimes as well, robo-pollinators assist in the process of floral pollination and seed dispersal -- but it's just until the ecosystem can resurrect itself to be fully self-reproducing after episodic lean periods in pollinator activity.

Yet technology remains secondary to biology. The city’s true infrastructure is botanical: roots stabilize hillsides against erosion, green corridors cool urban temperatures, and fungal systems recycle nutrients beneath the streets. Santa Cruz has become a hybrid organism, part natural forest, part garden city, part eco-machine, part social creation -- reflecting Haraway’s cyborg philosophy in ecological form.

By 2121, Santa Cruz no longer measures success through economic growth or industrial expansion. Instead, the city evaluates itself according to biodiversity, soil regeneration, water purity, and the health of its multispecies communities. Coyotes move safely through protected migration routes, rooftop apiaries support pollinators across the city, and restored redwood ecosystems connect urban neighborhoods to surrounding forests. Human residents understand themselves not as rulers of the environment but as participants within a fragile network of living relationships. Inspired by Donna Haraway’s theories, Santa Cruz has become a model for posthuman urbanism: a botanical city where survival depends not on separating civilization from nature, but on recognizing that humans have always been entangled with the plants, animals, and ecosystems that sustain life.