79-381 The Multispecies City: Anthropology of Urban Environments

9 units, Carnegie Mellon University

Cities are built environments, but they are also ecosystems that entangle human lives with those of animals, plants, and microbes. Cities use complex infrastructures to control the flow of traffic, energy, waste, and other matter, but these technologies are always shaped (and at times overcome) by a changing climate and other "forces of nature." Even the social inequalities that stratify human urbanites along lines of race, class, gender, and ability have an ecological dimension - not just in the spatial effects of segregation, gentrification, and disinvestment, but also in the specific assemblages of life that coexist in the city. In this course, we will use methods and theories from multispecies ethnography, science and technology studies, and environmental history to understand cities as unbounded, more-than-human spaces. Through case studies and field research, we will learn to trace the everyday interactions of organisms, infrastructures, politics, and biophysical forces - and to connect them to societal structures and global change. We will see how today's cities lay bare the limits of technological innovation, but also serve as vital sites of agricultural experimentation, eco-political activism, and regenerative design.

Prerequisites: none listed

Offered: Spring 2027, Spring 2026

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