Urban Ecologies: governing nonhuman life in global cities

A key aspect of planetary urbanization is its profound alteration of natural environments. Domestic animals now represent more than twice the biomass of humans globally. Despite this, the interactions between people, animals, and the built environment in urban ecologies have received limited systematic study in the social sciences.

The objective of this project is to understand how regulating nonhuman life is fundamental to governing global cities. It will seek to discover how human-animal dynamics are differentially composed in cities of the ‘Global South’ and ‘Global North and what social, economic and spatial forces structure these dynamics. Most global cities regulate animal presence, albeit with varying degrees of success and hence, this project will seek to answer how might an expanded notion of urban governance, incorporating ecology, reorient urban studies. The project tackles these questions through a comparative analysis focused on New Delhi, Cape Town 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.