Animals in the city, a review

Abstract

This chapter serves as an introduction to the book Animals in the City by providing a review of research on the history and current state of human and nonhuman animal interactions in cities. It explores the “animal turn” throughout the social sciences and argues that seven interrelated themes shape the consideration of animals in the city: blurred boundaries; the right to the city; intersections; the fabric of urban space; human and nonhuman systems; multispecies ethnography; and notions of collective welfare that can form the basis of a transspecies urban theory. The literature discussed clearly illustrates the reality that there are no hard and fast boundaries between human and nonhuman animals even in highly urbanized areas. The putative divisions between human and animal, nature and urban, and wild and “civilized” simply do not exist in cities. Whether the result of urbanization spreading into formerly rural or undeveloped areas, deindustrialization causing urban areas to “green,” or the fact that animals have always shared our cities, the supposed divisions between “us” and “them” do not match the realities of urban existence and experience.