Professor David Farrier

They are horrific.

And they're a message that says we will not share this space.

We will not share our cities.

Keep away.

And yet, our cities are horrible.

of non-human neighbors and it's in fact you know cities are one of the hot spots our cities are where some of the yes best examples of human-driven evolution and and human-driven plasticity can be seen because they're you know these they mimic natural environments and yet they create all these new opportunities for food and shelter and so on the birds um

that it's crows and magpies.

They've been observed doing this in Glasgow, Rotterdam and Antwerp, I think.

And they've been observed stripping these spikes away from buildings to make their nests.

And it's a wonderful example of repurposing in nature.

Amazing.

Taking something that was meant to be a barrier to exclude and turning it into a shelter, finding a new ordinance, a new possibility in something that is designed for one thing.

and finding it can be used for something else.

And it's a wonderful line of thought to take because our cities have been made for a single purpose.

Every building that gets thrown up is designed to have a particular purpose, whether it's the accommodation of offices or a cultural space or what have you, a school, but it's designed for the needs of that time.

And most buildings have an astonishingly short life.

I learned once that most buildings have a life that's between 60 and 100 years.

Is that it?

Something like that, yeah.

We tend to think of buildings as lasting longer than that, and many do, but clearly many don't.