“To allow for the emergence of an ethic, practice, and politics of caring for animals and nature, we need to renaturalize cities and invite the animals back in, and in the process re-enchant the city.” —Jennifer Wolch, “Zoöpolis,” Animal Geographies2 Our twin starting points are Reyner Banham’s observations on the distinct urbanism of Los Angeles, and Jennifer Wolch’s provocations around the development of new ethics and practices with regard to human-animal relations. In 1971, Banham’s “ecologies” were a new way to frame the very non-European city he encountered in Los Angeles. For Banham, ecologies were more about an intermixing of environment, culture, economics, geography, infrastructure, social demographics, and social life — rather than about a literal reading of scientific definitions of ecology as the study of the interrelationships between organisms and their environment; or about a traditional understanding of architectural history and urban development in Western countries. The four ecologies he described — Surfurbia, the Foothills, the Plains of Id, and Autopia — were as much physical as they were imaginative constructs; but they importantly spoke to a set of entangled and complex conditions that gave rise to unique forms of urban life in this very American city. While his writings are now 50 years old, certain aspects of Banham’s framing persist and have
12
“…no city has ever been produced by such an extraordinary mixture of geography, climate, economics, demography, mechanics, and culture…” —Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies1