We Are Not Alone: Nonhuman Animals in Our Urban Spaces

• In Event: Urban Inequalities: Causes and Redresses

Abstract

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: 65).

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. Acknowledging and examining the interactions between human and nonhuman animals in urban spaces is critical because all too often cities are understood as if they were solely the domain of the former. Public policies and other issues related to animals in the city have not been well explored; yet, issues of animal welfare have long been tied to municipal politics. It is critical for urban scholars to consider the realities that animals share our global cities. The proposed paper explores the current state of research on the politics of human/nonhuman animal relations in urban areas.

There are a host of health and public safety implications of the interaction between humans and animals in cities, 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, dog fighting and domestic violence. And regulating just companion animals in cities is a significant part of the work of city officials. It has been estimated that $2,400 million public dollars were spent on animal shelters in 2007 and that communities across the US spend about $8 per capita on sheltering lost and unwanted companion animals (Humane Society of the US, 2015).

Historically, regulations designed to protect the urban populace and property from animals have existed as long as humans and animals have lived in close proximity in cities and, in the US, have been determined to be legitimate exercises of police powers on the parts of state and local governments. Surveys have indicated that mayors ranked animal-related issues as the most common complaint to their offices. The presence of companion animals in the city illustrates the complexity of conflicting public efforts to cope with pets as objects of affection, economic value, respect, or abuse. However, contemporary cities also include non-companion animals such as live-stock and chickens as part of urban farming, wild animals whose shrinking habitats have caused them to become part of the urban environment, stray and feral animals as the result of economic distress, and hybrids such as “coydogs” resulting from interactions between companion animals and wild animals. This reality raises a host of political and policy issues ripe for urban scholarship.

Author

• Laura A. Reese, Michigan State University