ancient cities

Zo ö p o l i s
Zoöpolis refers to a city in which relations
between humans, other animals, and nature are
characterized by coexistence. Development of the
zoöpolis model represents a major move forward
in the opening of urban theory and research to
considerations of animal lives, meanings, and
agency in the city, in response to problematically
anthropocentric urban theories and practices.
This entry introduces the zoöpolis model and the
related transspecies urban theoretical framework
and also discusses some of the perspectives on
animals and cities that research along these lines
lends.
Zoöpolis: Origins, Model, and Theory
The broad context of the development of the
zoöpolis concept is characterized by considerable
changes in recent thought about the relationships
among humans, other animals, and the environment,
both on the global stage and in the academy.
Growing awareness of animal suffering in
factory farms and research laboratories, species
endangerment due to land development and
extractive economic activities, and the environmental
impacts of toxic waste and pollutants
began to generate substantial alarm several decades
ago about particular modes of animal treatment
and environmental management, galvanizing
highly visible activist movements and legal battles.
These concerns, along with developments in social
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theory, led scholars to rethink the boundaries
between culture and nature, humans and animals,
and the urban and the natural and to question
the sidelining of the “animal question” in
academic projects. Thus began the profusion of
research and theory on the relationship between
humans and nonhuman animals, in both contemporary
and historical contexts.
The zoöpolis model engages with the animal
question from an explicitly urban perspective. Its
origins lie in critiques of capitalist urbanization
and contemporary urban theory, which impugned
the former for proceeding with little regard for
nonhuman life and the latter for tending toward
anthropocentric accounts of urbanization. Jennifer
Wolch has pointed to the lexicon of mainstream
urban theory, which describes the transformation
of “empty” or “wasted” land into “improved”
land (in fact, land no longer able to sustain the
diversity of life that once inhabited it) and also to
the absence of nonhuman animals from feminist,
Marxist, and neoclassical urban theories. She
alleges that disastrous effects have followed from
these practices and conceptualizations of urbanization,
including threats to species and entire ecosystems
from the advancing urban edge and from the
expanding agro-industrial system that feeds urban
populations, as well as the horrific treatment of
factory-farmed animals. Displaced wild animals
and unwanted strays eke out urban existences in
the “subaltern animal town” that emerges where it
can within cities built to accommodate humans.
Wolch has also criticized urban environmentalism
for focusing on urban environmental problems