Animals in the City

Laura A. Reese

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367209599
• eBook ISBN: 9780429559457
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Human Geography

This book presents interdisciplinary research to examine the ongoing debates around nonhuman animals in urban spaces. It explores how we can better appreciate and accommodate animals in the city, while also exploring the ecological, health, ethical, and cultural implications of the same.

The book addresses seven interrelated themes such as blurred boundaries between the human and the nonhuman, the right of nonhuman species to the city, interactions between the human and nonhuman animals, the fabric of urban space, human and nonhuman complex systems, and collective welfare that forms the basis of a transspecies urban theory. It explains how a holistic understanding of the city requires that these blurred boundaries are acknowledged and critically examined. Chapters analytically consider the need to bring interspecies relationships to the fore to tackle questions of legitimacy and who has the "right" to the city. These also consider important intersections between the economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of the urban experience. The research contained in this book focuses on the development of an urban theory that would eradicate the divide between humans and other species in cities, and it depicts nonhuman animals as social actors that have voices within urban spaces.

With global insights on human–animal relationships in a contemporary context, this book will be useful reading for scholars and students of urban studies, animal sciences, animal law, animals and public policy, anthropology, and environmental studies who are interested in the study of animals in cities.

Part 1

Exploring theoretical issues in urban human-nonhuman animal relations

1Animals in the city, a review

Marie Carmen Shingne and Laura A. Reese

DOI: 10.4324/9780429264429-2

The story of the blind men and the elephant is an Indian folktale that illustrates how limited information and a narrow perspective can lead to conflicting results. In the story, each of the men encounters a different part of the elephant’s anatomy and concludes that the part he is touching accurately represents the totality of the animal. Thus, the man touching the elephant’s side thinks it is like a wall, the one touching the ear believes it is like a fan, the tusk is sword like, the trunk a snake, the leg a tree, and the tail a rope. The limited perspectives of the men do not just conflict; even if they were combined, they would not provide a comprehensive understanding of what an elephant actually is.

This current state of research focusing on the relationships between human and nonhuman animals is in some ways analogous to this folktale. While there has been increased interest in and debate about human-animal interactions in cities, much of it has been limited in scope. The growing literature is frequently fragmented along disciplinary lines, with interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary work being more limited. Human-animal research is also divided along geographic and cultural lines. Research that considers multiple species is rare.

The current volume represents a tentative first step toward the development of a comprehensive framework for studying human-animal interactions in cities. It is hoped that this book will not only introduce readers to new (to them) topics but also encourage a more holistic perspective on relations between human and nonhuman animals in cities.

Humans have never been the only animal to live in cities, and as the world becomes ever more urban, the number of animal species in the urban setting is only rising; “Animals, as individuals and as groups, are invariably present in urban areas, where they live their own lives in relation to humans and human infrastructure” (Palmer, 2003, p. 65). The potential connection between pangolins and COVID-19 is a critical case in point. COVID is a zoonotic virus, meaning that it can be passed from animals to humans: from bats to pangolins to humans. Pangolins are a delicacy sold in Chinese wet markets for their meat and scales. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have emphasized the importance of One Health, the reality that the health of human and nonhuman animals is linked. Pangolins contributed to making humans sick but, because they carry the virus but do not get it themselves, are now being studied to aid in treatment and prevention. They are but the tip of the iceberg of animals in the city.

There are a host of health and public safety implications of the interaction between humans and animals in urban spaces, ranging from the potential spread of rabies and parasites, to the need to dispose of animal waste, to ordinances that ensure proper regulation of owned companion animals, to efforts to combat animal cruelty, dogfighting, and domestic violence. The regulation of just companion animals in cities is a significant part of the work of city administrators, and decisions about them are inherently political: “if you thought taxes were the only issue that made voters’ blood boil, then you haven’t had a dog issue appear on the public agenda lately” (Mahtesian, 1999, cited in Kawczynska, 2015, p. 26).

Surveys by the International City Management Association indicate that 69% of US communities provide animal control services, with 48% operating a municipal animal shelter.¹ It has been estimated that $2.5 billion ($800 million to $1 billion by municipal animal controls alone) was spent on animal shelters in 2007 and that communities across the United States spend about $8 per capita on sheltering lost and unwanted companion animals (Humane Society of the US, 2015). And, of course, dogs and cats are just some of the nonhuman animals in urban spaces.

The ramifications of human diversity in cities play out in conflicts over views of animals as food or as pets, leading to legal and moral divides that must be mediated in the public sector. Internationally, the Yulin dog meat festival has engendered global protests. Points of conflict in US cities range from the dog-eating practices of Cambodian immigrants in Los Angeles, to class and religious differences about the acceptability of eating muskrat during Lent in communities surrounding Detroit, to protests over the serving of chicken at McDonald’s in New York City.² Sporting events such as dog racing and cockfighting and circuses involving animal performances have similarly enjoined cultural and value-based conflicts that are mediated at the local level.³

Many cities include noncompanion animals such as livestock and chickens as part of urban farming, wild animals whose habitats have become part of the urban environment, stray and feral animals as the result of economic distress, and hybrids such as wolf dogs resulting from interactions between companion and wild animals.⁴ And, despite the legal acceptance of an animal control role on the parts of cities, local officials must still contend with conflicts between stakeholders who press for the eradication or removal of “wild” species such as feral cats and coyotes on the one hand and those who advocate protected areas, reproductive controls, or an accommodation of urban lifestyles to peaceful coexistence on the other.⁵ The ongoing saga in Toronto over raccoons and the mythical “raccoon-proof garbage can lid” highlights the nexus of public health, urban wildlife, and the need for accommodation in growing urban centers.⁶

The research in this book serves as a starting point for an ongoing conversation about how to better accommodate and appreciate the other animals sharing the urban world. It is critical that we acknowledge and examine the interactions between human and nonhuman animals in urban spaces, because all too often cities are understood as if they were solely the domain of their human residents.

Humans have a long history of trying to maintain a human-animal divide. In pre-Neolithic totemic societies, animal species were ranked on a hierarchical scale and associated with different social groups, depending on status and desirability. Nonhuman animals were usually placed toward the bottom of such hierarchies (Philo & Wilbert, 2000). Biblically, animals were divided into “clean” and “unclean.” Later, the medieval “great chain of being” and Linnaeus’ Scala natura would also place animals below humans in value. And yet, the very fact that humans domesticated plants and animals means that there is no such thing as a “purely” human society (Philo & Wilbert, 2000). This does not stop humans from trying to create both physical and mental divisions between “us” and “them,” however.

In a survey on animal-related attitudes and activities in Trondheim, Norway, Bjerke and Østdahl (2004) found that, overall, Norwegians are supportive of large predators and herbivores (like moose) in the wilderness but do not want them anywhere near urban settings. They explain this with the culture-nature divide: “the ideals of urbanization have been based upon the notion of progress, revealed as the conquest of nature by culture” (2004, p. 110). Nature is beautiful and fascinating when existing in its own space, but when it comes into the urban space, it causes fear and concern. This volume presents research that directly challenges this divide.

There are a number of reasons why nonhuman animals share urban spaces, and almost all are the result of human actions. Urban sprawl has caused cities to spread into previously undeveloped areas. Thus, some animals formerly in more rural spaces have been swallowed up into cities, creating relict populations and inevitable interactions between human and nonhuman animals. While the forces of urban growth have led to increasing numbers of animals in cities, the opposite is also true. For deindustrializing and depopulating cities, an increase in greenspace provides environments for a number of nonhuman animals to survive and thrive in formerly urbanized areas. The confluence of human fiscal distress and such regreening has led cities like Detroit to have a significant stray and feral dog population, with implications for both humans and wildlife (Reese, 2015). Animals also reside in cities as the result of human habitation, either because they have been brought there with humans as pets or because they opportunistically have followed humans there due to the prevalence of shelter, food, and human waste products.

Animals entering the city as part of zoos or nature parks can become abandoned, are let loose, or escape, leading to populations of exotics such as alligators and large snakes. Animal populations can increase in cities as the result of the deliberate practices of humans (for example, backyard dog breeders) or from breeding due to the negligence of owners. Under all of these conditions, humans are responsible for, or the source of, the presence of a wide variety of nonhuman animals in urban spaces. And, as such, ethical questions underpin the relationships between humans and the animals that live among them, although the degree of dependence and responsibility varies based on the extent to which humans are complicit in their presence (Palmer, 2003).

Urban processes connect human and nonhuman animals in complex and mutually reinforcing ways. For example, dogfighting in urban areas has been found to be intertwined with a variety of human issues. First, research has indicated that dogfighting as a form of animal cruelty is not so much a function of entertainment (i.e. the act of watching dogs fight) as it is a means of making money from the associated gambling. There is an economic incentive that is exacerbated in more financially stressed urban areas (Richard & Reese, 2019). Economic distress and lack of opportunities for urban males also create an incentive to “master” animals and express masculinity through the breeding and fighting of dogs (Evans, Gauthier, & Forsyth, 1998; Kalof & Taylor, 2007; Stewart, Chapter 9). Thus, several aspects of the human world – poverty, lack of opportunities, need for control, and a desire to express particular gender roles – impact the welfare of animals in cities.

While animal cruelty, specifically, is not an inherently “urban” issue, there are aspects of the urban milieu that have been found to either exacerbate animal cruelty or affect the forms it takes; the abuse of animals has been found to be interconnected with various aspects of human relationships and broader social forces (Flynn, 2011; Merez-Perez & Heide, 2004; Richard & Reese, 2019). Exploration of animal cruelty as a factor in interpersonal relationships and community health has been growing since the 1990s, with notable attention to its role in domestic violence (Ascione, 1998; Carlisle-Frank, Frank, & Nielsen, 2004; Faver & Strand, 2003). However, cruelty in urban settings specifically has also been found to be related to other types of urban crime, such as the dogfighting just noted (Handy, 2001; Kalof & Taylor, 2007; Reese, 201...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Part 1 Exploring theoretical issues in urban human-nonhuman animal relations
• Part 2 Multispecies relationships in the city
• Part 3 Public policy implications of animals in the city
• Index