Urban greening and human–wildlife relations in philadelphia: From animal control to multispecies coexistence?

Abstract

City-scale urban greening is expanding wildlife habitat in previously less hos-pitable urban areas. Does this transformation also prompt a reckoning with the longstanding idea that cities are places intended to satisfy primarily human needs? I pose this question in the context of one of North America’s most ambi-tious green infrastructure programmes to manage urban runoff: Philadelphia’s Green City, Clean Waters. Given that the city’s green infrastructure plans have little to say about wildlife, I investigate how wild animals fit into urban greening professionals’ conceptions of the urban. I argue that practitioners relate to urban wildlife via three distinctive frames: 1) animal control, 2) public health and 3) biodiversity, and explore the implications of each for peaceful human– wildlife coexistence in ‘greened’ cities.