ABSTRACT
Zoopolis presents both challenges and opportunities for those committed to eco-socialist, feminist, and anti-racist urban futures. This chapter aims to foreground an urban theory that takes nonhumans seriously. Urban environmental issues traditionally center around the pollution of the city conceived as human habitat, not animal habitat. The most basic types of urban environmental change are well-known and involve soils, hydrology, climate, ambient air and water quality, and vegetation. Domestic and attractive animals were most preferred, while animals known to cause human property damage or inflict injury were among the least preferred. The everyday behavior of urban residents influences the possibilities for urban animal life. Scientific urban animal ecology is grounded in instrumental rationality and oriented toward environmental control, perhaps more than other branches of ecology since it is largely applications driven. The nascent trans-species urban practice involves numerous actors, including a variety of federal, state, and local bureaucracies, planners, and managers, and urban grassroots animal/environmental activists.
