Animal City

"American cities were once full of domesticated, semi-domesticated, and undomesticated species of animals. By the early twentieth century, the range of human-animal relationships and the geography of certain animal populations in cities were utterly transformed. Animal City explains what happened in those intervening decades and recovers the lost worlds of urban animal life and human-animal relations. Animal policy became a major form of governmental regulation in the nineteenth century, effected through new laws and new means of enforcement. Ideas of sanitation, refinement, and morality shaped animal policy, bolstered by the development of public health agencies, law enforcement, and the spread of early forms of urban zoning. Understanding nineteenth-century urban animal policy helps to explain certain aspects of urban development and environmental inequalities persisting into the twentieth century and up to the present. The book also tells is the story of an emerging chasm between consumers and the animals they consume. Urban residents in nineteenth-century America experienced the disappearance of livestock alongside the growth of pet ownership and pet culture. Together, the layers of change in urban animal populations in nineteenth-century America marked a notable remaking of human and animal life"--