lo Squaderno (Dec 2016)
Humans and Animals in Urban Jungles
Abstract
This piece focuses on urban animals through my personal observations and experiences of different urban landscapes. While humans present themselves as the actors who decide which animals to domesticate, cull, kill, eat and love, I will demonstrate that animals, either pets, strays, pests, victims or wild, are active actors who shape the urban landscape and culture. I will also demonstrate that there has always been a creation of borders between human and non-human (more than animal), and wild and civilised. Although I live in Istanbul, a city characterised by stray animals, I had not given much thought to them until I moved to England in 2004. When my eyes could not see any stray animals in the streets there, I retrospectively thought how lucky I’d been in Istanbul.
