A Zoöp is a multispecies governance model in which humans and more-than-human life coexist and decide together. The Zoöp Amstelpark, located in the public Amstelpark near VU Amsterdam, is the first public Zoöp in the Netherlands. It brings together the Municipality of Amsterdam, Zone2Source and of course Amsterdam Sustainability Institute, representing VU Amsterdam, to explore new ways of caring for and making decisions about the living environment.

For ASI, the Zoöp Amstelpark provides a space to explore what sustainability and governance can mean when we consider not only people, but also plants, animals, fungi, insects, soil, water and other forms of life. Through research, education, public dialogue and experimentation, we explore new ways of living together within a shared urban environment.

The Amstelpark is a learning place for multispecies politics: a space where residents, policymakers, researchers, students, artists and other participants can explore how our cities, institutions, legal systems, planning practices and forms of participation can better account for the interests of all life.

In October 2025, the Municipality of Amsterdam established Zoöp Amstelpark to explore multispecies governance and new ways for humans and more-than-human life to coexist.

The Zoöp emerged in the year Amsterdam celebrated its 750th anniversary, alongside an invitation to imagine the city's future beyond the interests of its human population. The project asks what it could mean to manage Amsterdam as a city for trillions of lives, rather than only for its human population.

The Amstelpark provides a place to explore these ideas in practice, bringing together citizens, policymakers, researchers, artists and other participants to learn and experiment together. And it comes with a special history: Designed for the international horticulture exhibition Floriade in 1972, much of the original structure of the exhibition is still in place. In 2022, the park was granted national monument status.

Today, the park is becoming a testing ground for exploring the relationship between heritage, ecology and urban life.

The Zoöp approach asks how the interests of all living beings can be actively represented in decision-making. 

This raises important questions:

Does the desire to preserve the park's heritage support or hinder efforts to give all life a voice and work towards multispecies justice? Could a broader understanding of heritage — one that includes immaterial and living heritage and sees heritage as a process of collective meaning-making beyond divisions between culture and nature — offer new ways of bringing these two designations together?

The Zoöp Amstelpark provides a space to explore these questions through practice, research and dialogue.

The Amstelpark is being developed as a learning environment for multispecies politics. Residents, visitors, policymakers, researchers, students, artists and other participants are invited to explore what it means to live together with all forms of life.

Engaging Amsterdam residents

The park is becoming a place where residents and visitors can actively learn about living together with all life. Through public programmes, art, a children's council and conversations in the park, people are invited to think, participate and engage with their surroundings.

Connecting zoonomic principles with heritage

As a national monument, Amstelpark brings together questions of cultural heritage and ecological values. Research is exploring how care for all life can be incorporated into regulations, management and policy.

Together with knowledge institutions and experts, the project investigates how heritage conservation and ecological values can be better aligned.

Exploring emotions and relationships with the living environment

The project also explores how people experience the park and nature, and how these experiences influence behaviour.

Through workshops and research within the School for Multispecies Knowledges, participants are encouraged to observe, listen and pay attention to their surroundings, with the aim of developing more careful relationships with the living environment.

As a sustainability institute, we contribute research, knowledge and spaces for dialogue around the questions emerging from the Zoöp Amstelpark.

The transition towards a sustainable society raises questions not only about the environment, but also about governance, democracy, knowledge, values and our relationship with the living world.

The Zoöp provides a practical context in which these questions can be explored.

Through discussions, panels, research, education and public events, we bring different perspectives together and create opportunities to examine the challenges and possibilities of multispecies approaches to sustainability.

Our role is to help create spaces where questions can be explored, different forms of knowledge can meet, and new approaches can be discussed and tested.

The Zoöp Amstelpark invites us to rethink how Amsterdam is governed and how decisions about the city are made.

Rather than seeing Amsterdam only as a city for its human population, the project asks what it means to understand the city as a home to trillions of lives.

This perspective opens up questions about participation, representation, planning and democracy, and about how the interests of all life can be taken into account.

The Amstelpark serves as a testing ground for exploring these questions — not as a finished model, but as an ongoing process of learning.

As the Sustainability Institute V.U., we support discussions around these questions through panels, public events, research and educational activities.

Explore our latest and upcoming events related to the Zoöp project below.