Animal City: The Domestication of America

Recap by Claudia Chiappa

On Tuesday, February 9, 2021, the Boston University Initiative on Cities and the BU History Department hosted a discussion with Andrew Robichaud, Assistant Professor of History at BU, and Catherine McNeur, Associate Professor of Environmental History and Public History at Portland State University. Robichaud and McNeur discussed Robichaud’s book, Animal City: The Domestication of America, which explores the connection between cities’ transformation in the 19th century and changes in the relationship between humans and animals. His book examines how cities like New York and San Francisco came to have the relationship they have today with animals and pets, looking into the growing regulations developed for slaughterhouses and stockyards, and the rise in popularity of pets, among other topics.

“What really stood out to me as something of interest was reading about these urban spaces in the 1800s,” noted Robichaud. “I got the sense that there was this really fascinating and incredible word that I wanted to spend more time in.”

Cities changed—and so did our relationship with animals

The world the author describes is “rich and bright and colorful” and nothing like what our cities look like today: pigs were roaming in the streets, cows were strolling in parks, and thousands of horses could be found anywhere. Not everything was bright, however. On the other side there were also stray dogs, and there were significantly fewer regulations in slaughterhouses.

Robichaud asked himself: what happened? How did our world shift over the last 200 years? How did it become so segmented?

A lot of the rules were introduced by the end of the 1800s. People started regulating where you can keep animals, what kinds of animals you can have, how slaughterhouses should operate, and so forth. “It wasn’t just that cities came to regulate these spaces more intensely and push out domesticated animals and push out stockyards and push out slaughterhouses and tanneries and so forth, but they’re also adding in new animals,” explained Robichaud. 

New and exotic animals became more popular as cities grew and evolved, which led to a rise in the popularity of zoos. Humans’ relationship with animals shifted greatly at this time, as animals went from being used for transportation and work to becoming a form of entertainment.

The creation of “slaughterhouse districts”

Cities went through similar transformations when they first started questioning the safety and health of animal spaces in the past, including the push to move slaughterhouses and other potentially unhygienic spaces outside of the city.

In an attempt to make these spaces invisible, cities created what Robichaud calls “sacrifice zones,” where slaughterhouses, canneries, or sewage treatment are housed. Even when rehabilitated, these neighborhoods remain disadvantaged and often can’t access the same resources available to the rest of the city. 

This turns into an issue of environmental and justice inequality, as many of these “slaughterhouse districts” often house low-income populations and immigrant populations. This dynamic of explicit racism, said Robichaud, continues over the year and shapes communities that still today are not getting access to investments.

“I think that those spaces deserve attention, public attention, attention of memory, attention of public resources, perhaps,” said Robichaud.

Ghost Animals

Robichaud also discussed “ghost animals” in his book, signs and evidence we can still find in cities that show the historic animal city, such as horse water fountains or leftover pieces of stable architecture.

“I think it would be interesting to sort of have some greater preservation efforts of the infrastructure of the animal city,” said Robichaud.

Even the organization of cities themselves carries traces of our old relationships with animals. Spaces like Commonwealth Avenue, for example, were designed to be experienced on a carriage.

“I think the most serious implication of thinking about animal ghosts is really thinking about the disparities in urban development that we see across space, that there are these zones that were set aside, that were set on a different track historically,” explained Robichaud.  

How COVID-19 changes urban spaces

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned the world upside down. Robichaud discussed the future consequences this outbreak could have, starting with the way our cities are built. Health scares in particular have the potential to lead to radical changes in our urban spaces, which may last in the future, including the rise in popularity of outdoor dining.

“A new perception of health changes how we think about the spaces between people and urban spaces,” said Robichaud. “City officials across the United States and even internationally are talking to each other, learning from each other how to regulate and remake space.

“I think that people who pick up “Animal City” will be astonished. And I think astonishment is a great thing when thinking about history and that this really was a different world in a lot of ways,” concluded Robichaud.