Three Landscape Essays is a pilot project that tests strategies to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis in Southern-European public space. Different phenomena –including recent heat waves and prolonged droughts, alongside the normalization of extreme weather phenomena such as snowfall or torrential rains–, highlight the lack of preparedness of southern European cities for the evolving climate crisis. These new conditions compel us to rethink our public space. In urban areas, a widespread lack of shade and an increase in temperatures due to impermeable surfaces and a scarcity of plant species softening the effects of heat, urge us to resort to new imaginaries. Far from a limitation, this crisis offers the opportunity to reconsider public space as a meeting place for diversity, a site of comfort for individuals from the same or different species, a node of convergence for different worldviews beyond the human.

Yet, the challenge is: How do we increase vegetation in the city in the face of the growing prospect of water scarcity? How can we imagine a public space for gathering without consuming a large volume of resources, a space pleasant for various stakeholders, a space fostering new ideas of community beyond the hu- man species? Responding to some of Madrid’s recent remodeling of public spaces –which overlook the urgency of the new climate situation and its opportunities–, Three Landscape Essays constitutes a pioneering experience imagining how our squares and streets could be in the near future.