ancient cities

978 Zoöpolis
as they impact humans. To the degree that environmental
thought has engaged with animals, it
has objectified them as resources or parts of a system,
or in the case of approaches that emphasize
ecological holism, it has backgrounded them by
minimizing differences between human and nonhuman
animals and animate and inanimate nature.
Such perspectives leave little room for understanding
nonhuman animals as subjective beings, as
entities that construct and experience their
worlds.
The recovery of animal subjectivity is central to
zoöpolis, for it suggests that humans are obligated
to move toward urban praxis that accounts for
animals as experiential beings. This may be facilitated
by (re)seating animals and humans in intersubjective
relationships, wherein realizations of
difference and similarities, and even kinship, can be
made, which would in turn foster ethical relations
based on respect and caring. This web of beings
recalls humans’ historical ontological dependency
on animals—the fundamentality of animals to the
development of the human species—and the interspecies
ethic of caring and friendship that this may
have created. Wolch notes that for much of human
history, people had simultaneous relationships of
dominance over animals and respect for them,
valuing both animal differences from and similarities
with humans; not coincidentally, most wild
animal habitats were also sustained. The place
where such relations can be reconstituted is in a
reanimated, renaturalized city called zoöpolis.
The zoöpolis model poses harmonious human–
animal–nature relations as the key to greener and
more just urban futures. By bringing animals (wild
and productive) and nature into the urban sphere,
humans could gain a situated understanding of
animal life, which would engender an ethic, practice,
and politics of caring for animals and nature.
These new relationships may come to alter both
personal beliefs about the human–animal/human–
nature divide and deeply embedded political–
economic structures, social relations, and institutions,
which currently alienate humans from animals and
the natural world and perpetuate violence and
destruction unto nonhuman entities.
Integral to zoöpolis is the development of a
transspecies urban theory that would expand
understandings of human–animal relations to
inform an agenda for bringing animals back into
urban society and space. In particular, Jennifer
Wolch, Kathleen West, and Thomas Gaines state
that a transspecies urban theory, based in social
theory, would enable scholars to address questions
about how and why urban residents react to the
presence of wild animals and what this means for
animals; how urbanization impacts wild animals;
how urbanization practices, human attitudes and
behaviors, and animal needs intersect to create
urban wildlife ecologies; and how planning,
policy-making, and political struggles have arisen
to protect wild animals. The proposed conceptual
framework indicates a relationship between
human–wildlife interactions and the process of
urbanization, each of which affects urban wildlife
ecology; ecological changes stimulate transspecies
urban practices (often corrective measures), which
in turn impact human–wildlife interactions and the
urbanization process. This theory, as Alice Hovorka
has pointed out, holds human–animal relationships
as fundamental to understanding urban
form, function, and dynamics.
Perspectives on Animals and Cities
Research on animals and cities has covered many
topics and time periods, exploring themes significant
to urban development, urban culture and
society, and urban ecology. Cumulatively, this
work evinces animals to be an integral part of the
urban. Although not all of this work is informed
by the concept of zoöpolis or objectives of transspecies
urban theory, this framework provides a
useful organizational structure for research on animals
in urban landscapes.
Social constructions of animals and role of animals
in shaping human and cultural identities have
been dominant concerns in human–animal interaction
work. Historical scholarship has examined
how wild animals—particularly exotic animals—
became symbols of status and wealth in urban
societies of the sixteenth century and onward, as
well as representations of rulers’ power over
national and international affairs. Given as diplomatic
gifts along with vases and diamonds, and
kept in private menageries and at court, rare and
curious exotic animals amused as they reminded
viewers of the collector’s prestige and their nation’s
place in world affairs. Exotic animals also became
popular as household pets and objects of naturalistic