Urban Ecologies: governing nonhuman life in global cities

ended

A fundamental dimension of planetary urbanization is its radical transformation of nature. Domestic animals now make up more than twice the biomass of humans on the planet. They are vital to livelihoods of the urban poor in the global south, providing economic opportunities, yet posing zoonotic risks. In contrast, cities of the north are marked by the paucity of animals and concomitant health concerns. Yet, urban ecologies – relations between people and animals, and their interactions with the built environment – have received scant systematic attention in the social sciences. The objective of this project is to lay bare how regulating nonhuman life is fundamental to governing global cities. How are human-animal dynamics differentially composed in cities of the global south and north? What social, economic and spatial forces structure these dynamics? Most global cities regulate animal presence, albeit with varying degrees of success. How then might an expanded notion of urban governance incorporating ecology reorient urban studies? And finally, how might such an analysis help promote resilient and sustainable cities? The project tackles these questions through a comparative analysis focused on New Delhi, Guwahati and London. Using a combination of conventional ethnographic research methods and innovative ecological perspectives, it will generate novel explanatory concepts for understanding urban ecologies and their implications for governing global cities. This research is ground-breaking in four ways: 1) by addressing an uncharted but critical field of human action, it sheds new light on urban governance; 2) by integrating adjacent disciplines that seldom interact, it pushes the frontiers of urban studies; 3) by combining social and ecological perspectives, it adds to methodological innovation in the social sciences; 4) by accounting for how ecology shapes marginalized lives, it contributes to new agendas of making cities resilient for the urban poor.