Placing Animals in Urban Environmental Ethics Clare Palmer Introduction This article originates in twin concerns relating to animals and ethics. One concern relates to dominant ethical approaches to animals, the other to the apparent absence of animals from some work in environmental ethics, in par- ticular, nascent research in urban environmental ethics. In this article, I want to explore both different ways of thinking about animals ethically and some aspects of how animals might be placed in urban environmental ethics. For several decades now, the work of Peter Singer 1 and Tom Regan has dominated animal ethics and has been the subject of classroom teaching, student texts, 2 and academic discussion. Yet Singer’s and Regan’s respective utilitarian and rights approaches seem, as feminist writers such as Val Plumwood, Josephine Donovan, and Deborah Slicer claim, problematic in a variety of ways. 3 I will not, in this article, revisit already well-made criticisms of the ‘Singer-Regan approach.’ Rather, I will think specifically about partic- ular ethical issues raised by relationships with animals in urban environments. This approach differs from the thrust of utilitarianism or rights theories, since they tend to the view that ethical prescriptions are invariant among urban, rural, oceanic, and wilderness environments. In this sense, animal ethics in urban environments would be no different from animal ethics anywhere else. Rather, I will suggest that the complex nature of urban areas and the diver- sity of human-animal relationships within these areas raise very different questions for animal ethics than (say) those raised within wilderness areas. 4 This leads to my second concern. As it is widely acknowledged, urban environmental ethics is an underresearched area. But in the literature which does exist, animals play very little part. Take, for example, the recent essay collection Ethics and the Built Environment. Only two papers in the volume mention animals at all, and both mentions are fleeting. 5 Or, equally, consider Roger King’s article “Environmental Ethics and the Built Environment.” 6 The article discusses the ‘nonhuman’ in general terms, but does not speak of animals specifically. It concludes by recommending four principles for the built environment. One of these is “The built environment should show respect for its users, both contemporary and future.” 7 The following discus- sion makes it clear that the users he has in mind are human users. Yet animals of different kinds use the built environment constantly, just as human users do. Urban environmental ethics has tended to focus on impacts of urban en- vironments on human life, health, and happiness, and, in addition, on the environmental impacts of urban living. But in this important discussion of JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 34 No. 1, Spring 2003, 64–78. © 2003 Blackwell Publishing, Inc.