For a long time, I was satisfied with the idea of agency. New materialist thinking helped loosen the human habit of treating the world as inert, reminding us that action is shared and distributed. But lately, agency has felt incomplete. Animacy names something quieter and more fundamental: the tendency of things to act, persist, and express themselves according to their own nature, whether I’m paying attention or not.

A rediscovered garage on a city street sent me spiralling into questions of agency and sentience. Does a building act? Can a doorway want to return? Somewhere between “mashed potato and fuck you”, I found a reminder that words shape how we meet the living world — and sometimes, how the world meets us back.

There is no distance. Not between us, not between our past and future selves, not between the living world and the spirits that shape it. Floods, mycelium, and city corners all reveal the same thing: connection isn’t made, it’s recognized. What looks like empty space is already alive with relationship.

Urban animism sees cities as living reefs: ecosystems where humans, spirits, and places interact. This essay explores the shift from stewardship to custodianship, arguing that we’re not managers of urban life but participants with responsibility for the whole. From struggling neighbourhoods to thriving laneways, what does it mean to live as co-inhabitants in a city that’s alive?