Nonhuman Urbanism: Animals Are Public Too

This paper offers four speculations on the relationships between humans and nonhumans in an increasing urbanizing world. Since nonhuman species are also rapidly urbanizing, the kinds of spatial conditions in which they find themselves largely constructed by humans for humans which can focus and intensify Latour’s concept of a republic of beings. Landscape architects should be clear about the political ramifications of their work, and one way to achieve clarification is in the handling of the delicate, fragile interactions they arrange between species. Certainly the adoption of an untheorized neoliberal design agenda has in most cases specific and damaging consequences for nonhuman species. The paper uses the model of “infrastructure” to explore how different biopolitical user groups involve each other in their destinies.