Urban Animal Studies and Sustainability
Vienna Animal Studies- Apr 14
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 15
On the 8th of April 2025, Dr Claudia Hirtenfelder gave an impassioned lecture about urban animals and the ways in which they are considered as urban problems and solutions. The lecture, the second in our "Summer Lecture Series," considered urban animal histories and geographies, focusing in particular on the material implications of how animals are imagined in urban policy and practice. In case you missed the talk, we caught up with Claudia to get some extra details:
What is Urban Animal Studies?
Urban animal studies is a growing area of research that is interested in understanding how animals interact with, shape, and are shaped by 'the city'. It is a highly interdisciplinary field and depending on the scholar you may be focused on anything from urban ecology to urban political economies. I am an urban animal geographer because I am interested in how animals changing relations are expressed (and constrained) spatially. I am also interested in the political dimensions of such socio-spatial relations and the ways in which urban policy and practice literally opens up and forecloses opportunities for animals to act.
Why is it important to consider urban animals?
Cities are more-than-human, they have always been more than human and to understand how they operate requires thinking beyond 'the human'. Animals have always been in cities and these relationships have not been neutral or static. They change. It is our job as scholars to understand the significance of that change.
Cities can be sanctuaries for some animals. For koalas, Australian cities are becoming increasingly attractive homes due to habitat loss and fragmentation. The same is true for large cats like leopards and cities. These animals are feeling themselves pushed into cities due to environmental changes and, in some instances, pulled into cities because of the benefits they provide, like easier access to food. It is perhaps easy at the point to create a romantic picture of "inviting animals back in" which many news reports are now doing but these (re)introductions are political and fraught. There are increasing instances of human-wildlife conflict in cities and some animals are now coping with unhealthy conditions due to their reliance on human food waste. During my presentation I shared pictures of an elephant in India bleeding after running through a city and of a black bear who who was overweight and lethargic as he took up residence in the basement of an abandoned house. cities are not, then, always welcoming places for animals. In fact, they can be pretty hostile, especially animals who we persecute in our laws as vermin or pests.
And it is important to note that this is not only for wild or liminal animals - this is also a question for domesticated animals. They too have been an important part of how cities have formed but their relationships with cities have undergone dramatic changes too. Dogs and cats were once working animals in western cities but are today mostly considered pets. Horses used to be ubiquitous in North American and European cities and provided a great deal of transport and labour in cities. Today, in cities like New York and Vienna, they are mostly included in the city as spectacles for tourists.
Needless to say all of these relationships are important and deserving of attention if we want to understand animals and cities. We need to take seriously the ways in which animals interact with cities and think deeply about how our changing urban landscapes impacts them.
Is this where the question of animals "right to the city" comes in?
Yes. If we accept that cities are home to wide array of animals then we need to think about what claims to the city animals have. And, as prominent geographer David Harvey noted, when we think about right to the city it is important to realize that we are not only concerned with one's "right to remain" but also one's right to shape the fabric and make-up of the city. Harvey wasn't concerned with animals but animal studies scholars like Marie Carmen Shingne have taken up the challenge of exploring how this could be meaningfully applied to animals.
How is this all connected to sustainability?
So, when you think about sustainability and/or urban sustainable development you realize that you are holding in tension contemporary practices with a vision (or imaginary) of what you hope future cities will be. These discourses often frame future cities as technologically advanced, clean, and green. They very rarely think through the politics and impacts these changes might have for other animals.
Greening initiatives may, for example, attract additional animals and this might have some unforeseen/unwanted outcomes. You might attract additional geese which also increases the amount of droppings in that area. If human civilians are not prepared to 'deal with' this waste then you might have an emerging conflict situation. And, unfortunately, these situations can be devastating for the animals involved, especially if they become the target of an extermination campaign.
Not only can animals be impacted by how we try to achieve our sustainability visions but they are also actively included in some projects that try to achieve sustainable goals. In Vienna, for example, sheep are used on the Danube Island as grazers because they are believed to be less damaging than traditional lawnmowers and can, in turn, help biodiversity and pollinator efforts. The question then becomes if animals are part of the 'solution' when it comes to achieving sustainable cities then what do these inclusions mean for them? These are the questions I am hoping to spend the next few years working on.
In addition to being a researcher and lecturer you are also the host of The Animal Turn Podcast, can you tell us a little about that?
Sure! So I started The Animal Turn during my PhD in early 2020 and in a nutshell each season of the podcast focuses on a specific theme and includes nine episodes in which I interview experts about important concepts in that theme. Season 3 was, for example, focused on "Animals and The Urban" and included interviews on concepts like "pervasive captivity" with Nicholas Delon, "urban metabolism" with Catherine Oliver, and "informality" with Yamini Narayanan. The 10th episode of each season is a grad review in which I talk with other PhD students or early career researchers about important overlaps and tensions to emerge in the season. The podcast has been very well received and even won the inaugural AASA award for popular communication in animal studies. I've recently launched a sister podcast called The Animal Highlight which has shorter episodes that are less conceptually oriented and more exclusively focused on animals and the ways in which they are amazing.
For people interested in learning more about urban animals do you have any suggested readings?
Below are just a few of my favourites:
Where species don't meet by Paula Arcari and Fiona Probyn-Rapsey
Animals and Urban Gentrification by Phil Hubbard and Andrew Brooks
A fowl politics of urban dwelling by Jeremy Gordon.
Pervasive Captivity and Urban Wildlife by Nicolas Delon.
Colonization, urbanization, and animals by Clare Palmer
The City is More than Human by Frederick L. Brown
Street dogs at the intersection of colonialism and informality by Yamini Narayanan
Is there anything else you would like readers to know about urban animals and sustainability?
Cities are the fastest growing ecology in the world. They are also sites of incredible consumption and innovation. If we are going to achieve a more just, multispecies world I truly believe that we need to focus on cities and disrupt the generally anthropocentric ways in which our policies and imaginaries about them have been constructed. So not only is urban animal studies infinitely interesting, it is also desperately important. I am excited to see the growing interest in the field but there is still a lot of work to do.
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