Ready for more-Than-human? Measuring urban residents' willingness to coexist with animals

Abstract

In the context of rapid urbanisation, geographers are calling for embracing non-humans as urban co-inhabitants. But if animals and plants are seen as 'out of place', sharing urban space can lead to wildlife conflicts. We therefore need to better understand residents' willingness to coexist if we are to work towards more-than-human cities. This study quantitatively compared residents' preferences toward sharing their neighbourhood, as well as perceptions of belonging across urban green space in two geographically and culturally distinct cities: Brisbane, Australia, and Sapporo, Japan. Results suggest that geographical and cultural context alongside educational attainment and age influenced respondents' willingness to coexist, but not sex and income. Mapping respondents' preferences for animals in their neighbourhood revealed four groups of animals along two axes-global-local and wanted-unwanted. These arose from the way animals contested the human notions of control over urban space. As spaces where animals belong in cities, most respondents chose informal green space (e.g. vacant lots, brownfields) after forests and bushland. Drawing upon recent theoretical and empirical research on liminal urban spaces, I argue that such informal green space can offer 'provisional arrangements' which allow for conciliatory engagements with non-humans. I thus propose informal green spaces as territories of encounter-a possible path towards more-than-human cities. Finally, I discuss some implications for planning and management of interspecies interactions.

Full text

URN:NBN::tsv-oa64182
DOI: 10.11143/fennia.64182
Ready for more-than-human? Measuring urban residents’
willingness to coexist with animals
CHRISTOPH D. D. RUPPRECHT
Rupprecht, Christoph D. D. (2017). Ready for more-than-human? Measuring
urban residents’ willingness to coexist with animals. Fennia 195: 2, pp. 142–
160. ISSN 1798-5617.
In the context of rapid urbanisation, geographers are calling for
embracing non-humans as urban co-inhabitants. But if animals
and plants are seen as ‘out of place’, sharing urban space can
lead to wildlife conicts. We therefore need to better understand residents’
willingness to coexist if we are to work towards more-than-human cities.
This study quantitatively compared residents’ preferences toward sharing
their neighbourhood, as well as perceptions of belonging across urban
green space in two geographically and culturally distinct cities: Brisbane,
Australia, and Sapporo, Japan. Results suggest that geographical and
cultural context alongside educational attainment and age inuenced
respondents’ willingness to coexist, but not sex and income. Mapping
respondents’ preferences for animals in their neighbourhood revealed
four groups of animals along two axes – global-local and wanted-
unwanted. These arose from the way animals contested the human
notions of control over urban space. As spaces where animals belong in
cities, most respondents chose informal green space (e.g. vacant lots,
brownelds) after forests and bushland. Drawing upon recent theoretical
and empirical research on liminal urban spaces, I argue that such informal
green space can oer ‘provisional arrangements’ which allow for
conciliatory engagements with non-humans. I thus propose informal
green spaces as territories of encounter – a possible path towards more-
than-human cities. Finally, I discuss some implications for planning and
management of interspecies interactions.
Keywords: urban geography, belonging, wildlife conict, informal green
space, human-nonhuman relations
Christoph D. D. Rupprecht, FEAST Project, Research Institute for Humanity and
Nature, 457-4 Motoyama, Kamigamo, Kita-ku, Kyoto, 603-8047 Japan, E-mail:
crupprecht@chikyu.ac.jp
Introduction: In search of pathways towards more than human cities
“Recurrent invasions racked the city of Theodora in the centuries of its history; no sooner was one
enemy routed than another gained strength and threatened the survival of the inhabitants. When
the sky was cleared of condors, they had to face the propagation of serpents; the spiders'
extermination allowed the ies to multiply into a black swarm; the victory over the termites left the
city at the mercy of the woodworms. One by one the species incompatible to the city had to
© 2017 by the author. This open access article is licensed under
a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

FENNIA 195: 2 (2017) 143Christoph D. D. Rupprecht
succumb and were extinguished. By dint of ripping away scales and carapaces, tearing o elytra
and feathers, the people gave Theodora the exclusive image of human city that still distinguishes
it. […] Man had nally re-established the order of the world which he had himself upset: no other
living species existed to cast any doubts.” (Calvino 2013, 49)
Do we as urban residents want to share our cities? Whom do we welcome, whom do we (try to) expel?
How do we decide who is out of place, and where they are not? In the face of ongoing global
urbanisation, scholars have looked beyond human inhabitants. They have opened their eyes to urban
landscapes teeming with micro-organisms, plants and animals, prompting a (second) renaissance of
urban ecological studies (Gilbert 1989; Sukopp 2002). Simultaneously, increased interest in animal
geography and urban human-nature relations has led to growing calls for cities where non-humans
belong (Wolch et al., 1995; Wolch 1996, 2002; Hinchlie et al. 2005; Hinchlie & Whatmore 2006;
Seymour & Wolch 2009; Metzger 2014).
In this article, I aim to discover what chances and challenges such an embracing approach towards
nonhumans might entail. Drawing upon theoretical and empirical work in urban human-nature
geographies, I test a quantitative approach to learn about people’s willingness to coexist with
animals and plants. Results of an exploratory mail-back sur vey in Brisbane, Australia, and Sapporo,
Japan, suggest that geographic and cultural, and to some degree demographic dierences, congure
willingness to coexist with wildlife. Where residents think non-humans belong in the city, and
whether animals contest physical and ideological urban boundaries further inuence how space is
negotiated. Based on these results, I argue that informal urban green spaces (which I discuss in
more detail below), where our expectations of human control are weaker, may oer ‘provisional
arrangements’ (Nohl 1990) as potential territories of encounter – and thus could be a path towards
more-than-human cities.
Our ‘entanglement’ with life around us is nowhere more apparent than in the city (Ingold 2008).
Urban ecosystems provide a plethora of services by ltering our air, reducing noise, draining
rainwater that might otherwise sweep away our homes, and treat the sewage we produce (Bolund
& Hunhammar 1999). Scholars have described how our urban selves have ‘nature needs’ (Matsuoka
& Kaplan 2008) and have provided growing evidence for a strong link between our health and urban
greenspace (Brown & Cummins 2013; Keniger et al. 2013; van den Berg et al. 2015). These ecosys tem
services depend at least partly on a diversity of species we are entangled with (Mace et al. 2012). For
example, without opportunities for urban residents to interact with nature, this ‘extinction of
experience’ (Miller 2005; Soga et al. 2015) could aect biodiversity beyond cities as conservation
eorts depend on public support (Dunn et al. 2006). As city dwellers, we also draw upon the (agro)
diversity in our community gardens to supply us (and the microorganisms that reside within us
(Bordenstein & Theis 2015)) with the vitamins and minerals we need (Guitart et al. 2014). Yet
sometimes we reject these ties and try to sever them.
Urban wildlife conicts are ubiquitous. We struggle with plants over space and belonging (Gröning
& Wolschke-Bulmahn 2003; Head & Atchison 2008; Foster & Sandberg 2010; Rupprecht et al. 2015a)
and with animals such as rats, monkeys, bears, deer, birds, bees over space and plants (Knight 1999;
Jerolmack 2008; Honda 2009; Enari & Suzuki 2010; Yeo & Neo 2010; Lemelin 2013; Belaire et al. 2015).
We are bitten by mosquitos, ants, spiders or coyotes (Howell 1982), reduced to helpless sneezing or
worse by various plant pollen, subjected to aerial bombardments by defecating birds, and feel
oended in various ways by all matter of animals and plants in what have come to be known as
‘ecosystem disservices’ (Lyy timäki et al. 2008; von Döhren & Haase 2015). We retaliate with
herbicides, pesticides and ‘management’ of urban wildlife (Wolch et al. 1995; Jessup 2004; Adams
2012; Rupprecht et al. 2015a), seeking to establish dominance.
What paths then lead to more-than-human cities? Wolch, West and Gaines (1995, 755) lay out the
foundations for a transspecies urban theory to foster creation of “an environmental ethic that
recognises the fundamental linkages between human justice and justice for animals”. Rather than
an uneasy stand-o, they aim for “a city whose residents reincorporate wild animals into everyday
human aairs by respecting their dignity and value, by accepting the duty to know their ways of
living” (Wolch et al. 1995, 746). However, a case study about an intentional community commit ted to
fostering human-animal relations showed that not all animals were equally welcome (Seymour &

144 FENNIA 195: 2 (2017)Research paper
Wolch 2009). Hinchlie and Whatmore (2006, 136) suggest that “attention be paid to the diversity of
ecological attachments and heterogeneous associations through which the politics of urban nature
is fabricated, rather than reading the political ecology of the city o a priori or abstract social
divisions”. This complements Wolch (2002, 735), who argues that a major goal in an agenda to re-
animate the city would be “to trace how and why attitudes and practices toward animals and
patterns of urban human-animal interactions change over time and space”. Evidence suggests time
and place are not the only things that aect human-animal interactions. The words human-animal
or human-plant relationships can hide the multitudes of dierent entanglements lurking beneath
the surface. In his early work among the recent wave of animal geography, Philo (1995) encounters
the diculty of tting dierent animals into a continuum of inclusion and exclusion, from pets to
lions and urban foxes. Grith, Wolch and Lassiter (2002) show in their study of culturally based
animal practices of Filipinas in the USA that for humans, too, the way we are entangled can vary
widely. How to examine these vast lines of entanglement and complex networks?
Researchers in a number of dierent elds have engaged with the questions raised by human-
nonhuman urban coexistence, including but not limited to literature in animal studies and more-
than-human geography (Hinchlie 2003; Johnston 2008; van Dooren & Rose 2012; Lorimer 2012;
Urbanik 2012; Buller 2014, 2015), urban political ecology and planning (Philo 1995; Hard 2001;
Power 2009; Byrne 2011; Barua 2014; Hillier & Byrne 2016; Houston et al. 2017), and urban ecology
and conservation (McKinney 2008; Barua et al. 2013; Rupprecht et al. 2015a). The speci c context of
Australia has been the focus of several st udies (Ander son 1997; Instone 2004; Power 2005; Da vison
2006; Franklin 2006; Instone & Sweeney 2014; McKiernan & Instone 2016). The new living
bibliography (‘Animal Studies Living Bibliography ’, n.d.) oers a wealth of literature for readers
eager to explore this topic in depth. In addition to recent theoretical work on multispecies cities
and urban planning (Houston et al. 2017), one important remaining task then is to take a step back
from studies focused on individual human-nonhuman relationships, and attempt to quantitatively
map an overview of the multitude of relations hiding behind the words ‘human’ and ‘non-human’
– a task I take up in this paper.
Quantitative approaches looking at human-nonhuman encounters remain comparatively rare.
Nevertheless, they may provide an idea about which non-pet animals feature most prominently in
the contestations of space the urban political ecology literature describes, and which factors (e.g.
cultural or geographic context, gender, class, race, age) merit further exploration. Drawing upon
earlier work on attitudes towards animals (Kellert & Westervelt 1984; Kellert 1993) but also
geographical literature, Bjerke and Østdahl (2004) surveyed Norwegian residents’ attitudes towards
common urban animals. They found clear preferences for some species, and discovered educational
level and gender eects. A study by Sawaki and Kamihogi (1995) in Japan included a spatial element
by asking respondents to indicate where they would be comfortable with animals living (e.g.
everywhere, their garden or veranda, a park within walking distance, a far-away park or forest, or
nowhere). Using this data, they identied dierent groups based on preferences for species and
spaces of coexistence – ‘animal lovers’, respondents who want to share garden and veranda with
preferred animals, those with very strong dierences in preferences between animals, and
respondents who prefer animals to keep a large distance from them. These studies and an emerging
body of similar work show how quantitative approaches may help identify ways towards negotiating
more-than-human cities, complementing qualitative research to underpin future theoretical
advances in urban human-nature relationships (Bjerke et al. 1998a, 1998b, 20 03; Almeida et al. 2014;
Borgi & Cirulli 2015).
Additional gaps exist in our knowledge of human nature relationships apart from the limited
number of quantitative studies. Firstly, existing studies were mostly undertaken in Europe, with
one study from the USA (Kellert & Westervelt 1984), one from Japan (Sawaki & Kamihogi 1995) and
one cross-national comparison (Kellert 1993). How such relationships are inuenced by geographic
or cultural inuence thus remains unclear. Secondly, plant-human relationships have not been
s t udied using a q u antitat ive appro ac h, possib ly due to ou r te nd en cy fo r ‘p la nt b lind ne ss ’ ( Wan de rs ee
& Schussler 1999). Sawaki and Kamihogi (1995) further suggest that the spatial aspect, or the
question where residents think nature belongs in cities, strongly inuences human-nature

FENNIA 195: 2 (2017) 145Christoph D. D. Rupprecht
relationships – yet we know little about it. Some urban spaces may be subjected to less human
control (e.g. fences, traps, herbicide, or simply less rigid cultural notions of belonging) (Franck &
Stevens 2007). For example, researchers found that informal urban green spaces (IGS) (e.g. vacant
lots, street and railway verges, brownelds) were closely associated with wild animals and plants,
and perceived as ‘neutral ground’ not rmly under human control, while also pointing out issues
such as ownership and liability as factors limiting the potential of IGS (Rupprecht et al. 2015b, 2016).
Could these be ‘spaces for nonhumans’, spaces where we can engage with them (Hinchlie et al.
2005)? Knowing whether residents perceive IGS as more of a place of belonging for nature than
other urban spaces could inform urban wildlife planning policy. In this paper, I attempt to address
some of the gaps outlined above and outline others as directions for future research in the
conclusion.
The main research questions addressed in this paper thus are: 1) What knowledge of and attitude
toward urban nature underlies residents’ encounters with animals?; 2) Who are the main non-
human actors featuring (positively and negatively) in residents’ imagination of their neighbourhood?;
3) How do residents normatively rank urban spaces in terms of where animals and plants should be
able to live?; and 4) What factors are inuencing residents’ in their perception and preferences?
Developing a resident survey for Sapporo (Japan) and Brisbane (Australia)
This study was part of a larger project comparing Brisbane (Queensland, Australia) and Sapporo
(Hokkaidō, Japan). As described elsewhere (Rupprecht & Byrne 2014a), these cities share similarities
and dierences that lend well to comparison (e.g. similarities in size, morphology, and geography;
dierences in location, cultural context, population density and growth forecasts; Table 1). While
Sapporo has less greenspace than Brisbane, research has shown that residents form their image of
Sapporo by perceiving its greenspaces in daily life (Ueda & Rupprecht 2014). A comparison provides
overviews of human-nonhuman relations across cultural, geographic and population-trajectory-
City of Brisbane (LGA) Sapporo
Founded 1824, city status 1902 1868, city status 1922
Population
(projected)
1,089,743 (2011) (2031: 1,27 million) 1,936,189 (2013) (2030: 1,87 million)
Area 1,338 km² 1,121.12 km
2
Pop. density 814/km² 1,699/km
2
Peak density >5,000/km² >8,000/km²
Climate Humid subtropical (Cfa) Humid continental (Dfa)
Industry Tourism, resources, retail, financial
services, agriculture hub, education
Tourism, retail, IT, agriculture hub,
resources, education
Greenspace Local parks: 3,290 ha (32 m²/capita)
All parks: 11840ha (115 m²/capita)
Parks: 2,345 ha (12.3 m²/capita)
All greenspace: 5,508 ha (28.9
m²/capita)
Park area
planned
40 m²/capita, minimum 20 m²/capita “No greenspace loss, park renovation”
Table 1. Comparison of cities selected for case study (adopted from Rupprecht & Byrne 2014a).

146 FENNIA 195: 2 (2017)Research paper
related contexts. However, the comparative research I undertake here does not see the two cities as
bounded and given akin to traditional comparative urban studies, but draws loosely upon a relational
comparative urban studies approach (Ward 2010). The human-nonhuman entanglements and
encounters this paper examines exemplify the openness and relations territorialised in place, even
though the methods I use depart from the common qualitative approaches. The scale of the sampling
grid (see below) should thus be understood as a result of the ecological study conducted in parallel.
Looking at similarities and dierences here is an exercise in examining shared relations, not insisting
on mutually exclusive contexts. After all, many non-humans encountered traverse the geographic and
cultural distances between both sites.
Data collection was undertaken as part of a larger study on informal urban green spaces (IGS)
and urban residents’ use and perception of such spaces (Rupprecht & Byrne 2014a; Rupprecht et al.
2015b, 2016). Using a survey served as a way of understanding perceptions, which shape the option
space for subsequent planning policies. A postal survey was adopted over door-to-door canvassing
due to budget restrictions and to allow respondents to complete the questionnaire at a time
convenient for them. A letterbox-drop, reply-paid mail-back questionnaire kit was distributed to a
sample of 1,910 households in Brisbane and 1,980 in Sapporo (the small variation resulted from site
accessibility). The households were located within a 400 m radius (easy walking distance) of 121
sampling sites. Questionnaires were only distributed at sites where IGS was located within a 400 m
radius, to maximize potential respondents’ IGS interaction. The 121 sampling sites were placed on
the intersecting lines of a 10 km by 10 km grid centred on the city centres, using a systematic grid
sampling design. There was a one-kilometre distance between any two adjacent sampling sites. This
allowed covering most of the densely populated area. Additional discussion of survey design is
available in prior work (Rupprecht & Byrne 2014a; Rupprecht et al. 2015b).
Questions asked were part of a larger study on the adult residents’ perception and evaluation of
IGS (Rupprecht et al. 2015b). The full survey instrument is available online (Rupprecht & Byrne 2016).
This study draws upon a previously unreported sub-set of seven questions in addition to
demographic data. Statements on nature’s value were derived from La Trobe and Acott’s (2000)
version of Dunlap’s New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) question set (Dunlap et al. 2000), and were
modied to specically address urban nature. Following Sawaki and Kamihogi (1995), respondents
wrote down ve animals (except pets) they would like to see in their neighbourhood, and ve they
would not like to see. Pets were excluded because humans make a conscious decision to co-inhabit
their home with pets. This open-ended list style was chosen over a Likert-style preference for a
given list of animals to accommodate for dierences between cities (Bjerke & Østdahl 2004). Finally,
respondents had to balance wildlife protection against possibly necessary restrictions in lifestyle in
a question slightly adapted from an earlier survey by Sapporo City (Sapporo Shichō Seisakujitsu
Kōhōbu Shimin No Koe O Kiku Ka 2011). The instrument was approved by the human subjects
research ethics committee of Grith University (ENV/28/12/HREC).
Data was analysed in SPSS (v. 21 and 22, OS X) to perform descriptive and inferential statistical
tests following standard procedures (Field 2009). Initial analyses indicated that the sample data
were not normally distributed (P-P plots, skewness and kurtosis tests). Following Field (2009), I
therefore chose non-parametric statistical tests. Bonferroni-corrected Mann-Whitney tests to
correct for multiple comparisons were used following Kruskal-Wallis tests to identify educational
levels signicantly diering from others. The Jonckheere test was used to explore potential trends
in eects of dierent educational attainment levels. Finally, an exact approach for signicance using
a Monte Carlo simulation was chosen for tests involving age brackets, as this method does not
require assuming a normal distribution of the data.
Data on respondents’ preference to see or not see animals in their neighbourhood were rst
cleaned to unify the spelling of animal names, then analysed to identify most frequently mentioned
animals. As respondents frequently named both individual species (e.g. blue-tongue lizards,
sparrows) and species groups (e.g. lizards, birds), individual species were not consolidated into
species groups. Qualitative comments some respondents added to explain their choices were
incorporated into the discussion. Preference scores were calculated for animals mentioned more
than ve times in total by adding up positive mentions (+1) and negative mentions (-1). Highly

FENNIA 195: 2 (2017) 147Christoph D. D. Rupprecht
contested animals were dened as those with a dierence of more than ten points between
preference score and total mentions. Counting each space where residents thought animals or
plants should be able to live as one point, scores for general willingness to coexist with plants and
animals were calculated (minimum score 0, maximum score 6 points).
Survey results: coming to grips with nature in the neighbourhood
A total of 123 valid responses were collected in Brisbane, 163 in Sapporo (response rate: Brisbane
6.4%, Sapporo 8.2%). Due to the low response rate, the interpretation of the results demands care to
avoid overgeneralization, but the sample is sucient for the exploratory research undertaken in this
paper. Brisbane and Sapporo samples show some dierences in respondents’ demographic
characteristics (Table 2), which have been described in more detail elsewhere (Rupprecht et al. 2015b).
As reported elsewhere (Rupprecht et al. 2015b), respondents valued greenspace in their
neighbourhood and generally desired more of it. They did not see themselves as very knowledgeable
about local nature (Table 3). Most respondents had what La Trobe and Acott (2000) call pro-
environmental value orientations.
Almost all Brisbane respondents stated that they knew the meaning of the word ‘biodiversity’
(94%), whereas few had heard the word before but didn’t know the meaning (5%) or didn’t know the
meaning at all (1%). In contrast, Sapporo respondents were much less condent: 31% stated they
knew the meaning of the word ‘biodiversity’, 35% didn’t but had heard the word before, and 33%
didn’t know the meaning at all. Most respondents stated that ‘to protect urban wildlife and plants,
we have to accept restrictions in our lifestyle’ (Brisbane 67%, Sapporo 54%). In comparison, 16%
(Brisbane) and 32% (Sapporo) thought ‘protecting urban wildlife and plants is important, but not if
it means changing our lifestyle’, while 16% and 3%, respectively, stated that ‘to enjoy a pleasant and
comfortable lifestyle we can’t avoid losing urban wildlife and plants’.
Figures 1 (Brisbane) and 2 (Sapporo) show which animals respondents wanted to see most and
least in their neighbourhoods. Respondents used the text elds to add information alongside their
animal choices that fell largely into two categories, adjectives (in Brisbane) and short, explanatory
sentences (in Sapporo). In Brisbane, ‘native’, ‘non-poisonous’ and ‘benecial’ were used to qualify
choices for wanted animals, in contrast to ‘feral’, ‘wild’, ‘poisonous/venomous’, ‘biting/disease-
carrying’, ‘dangerous’, ‘non-native’ and ‘introduced’ for unwanted animals. Explanatory sentences
were limited to ‘but humans kill them all’ (emphasis by the respondent, talking about tree snakes
and other snakes) for wanted animals and ‘any that don’t like me’ for unwanted animals.
In Sapporo, short explanator y sentences were more common than adjectives. For wanted
animals, respondents occasionally excluded certain species (e.g. ‘birds except crows’) and one
expressed he would welcome cuckoos which ‘were common in the past’. For unwanted animals,
respondents gave descriptions diverging from species categories: ‘animals with no aection for
their owners’ (but clarifying ‘though it’s not the animal’s fault’), ‘animals causing harm to humans’
(but clarifying ‘they should still be protected as much as possible’), ‘animals that do not belong/are
out of place’, and ‘abandoned pets’. Reasons why certain animals were unwanted included: ‘cats are
scary’, ‘Echinococcus’ (a tapeworm transmitted via fox faeces), ‘they will be killed when found, it’s
sad’ (about bears and deer), ‘they destroy the ecosystem of Japanese animals’ (about non-native
species), and ‘I want them to live a bit more in the mountains’. In addition, the adjectives ‘dangerous’,
‘large’, ‘wild’ and ‘feral’ were used infrequently.
Figures 3 (animals) and 4 (plants) show to which degree respondents thought urban spaces were
most appropriate for non-humans to live in. Overall, Sapporo respondents ranked spaces lower,
with dierences between the cities more pronounced for animals.
Inuence of sex, income, education and age
As noted above, due to the low response rate, the interpretation of the following results demands
care to avoid overgeneralization. All eects and signicant dierences are reported at a statistical
signicance level of p < .05. No statistically signicant dierences were found in either city between

148 FENNIA 195: 2 (2017)Research paper
women and men for biodiversity knowledge, opinion about wildlife-lifestyle balance or score for
general willingness to co-exist with animals and plants (the sum of appropriate places to live). Wanted,
unwanted and contested animals were almost identical in both cities between sexes (not statistically
tested). Similarly, income had no signicant eect on these results.
Biodiversity knowledge signicantly increased with education only in Sapporo, while education
had no eect on opinion about wildlife-lifestyle balance in either city. In Sapporo, general
Variables Brisbane (LGA) Sapporo p*
City Sample City
Sample
Age Median 34 54 45 58 <0.05
Sex Females (%) 50.7 62.7 53.0
53.2 n. s.
Education
(in %)
Did not finish high school
High school
University
10.5
25.1
30.7
2.5
18.6
78.9
11.0
36.6
32.2
3.8
42.5
53.8
<0.001
Income**
(annual house-
hold, in %)
Less than $25k/¥2 million
$25k–$50k/¥2–4 million
$50k–$75k/¥4–6 million
$75k–$100k/¥6–8 million
$100k–$125k/¥8–10 million
$125k–$150k/¥10-12.5 million
>$150k/¥12.5 million
Do not wish to answer
18.1
14.7
15.9
13.1
10.4
11.5
16.3
5.8
13.2
13.2
13.2
9.1
13.2
21.5
10.70
21.7
32.2
19.0
9.8
6.2
3.6
3.4
11.2
34.2
15.5
14.3
6.8
2.5
2.5
13.0
<0.001
Housing
(in %)
House (detached, duplex,
town/row/terrace house) with garden
House (detached, duplex,
town/row/terrace house) without
garden
Apartment or unit with shared
greenspace
Apartment or unit without shared
greenspace
81.3
2.4
10.6
5.7
54.7
4.3
9.9
31.1
<0.001
* Significant difference level between Brisbane and Sapporo questionnaire sample means using
Mann-Whitney U tests.
**
Note: Brisbane City income categories do not correspond exactly with the categories used in the
table (vary between +$600 for lowest category and +$6000 for highest category).
Sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Sapporo City Statistics Department.
Table 2. Sample population characteristics and comparison with census data (adopted from Rupprecht
et al. 2015b).

FENNIA 195: 2 (2017) 149Christoph D. D. Rupprecht
willingness to coexist with plants was aected by education level (H(3) = 12.228). Bonferroni-
corrected (thus reported at a p < .0167 level of signicance) Mann-Whitney tests showed that
respondents who did not complete high school had a signicantly lower score than all other
respondents. In Brisbane, both general willingness to coexist with plants (H(3) = 9.302) and animals
(H(3) = 9.285) were signicantly aected by education level. Jonckheere’s test revealed that with
rising education level scores moderately increased for both animals (J = 2737, z = 2.89, r = .27) and
plants ( J = 2761, z = 3.00, r = .28).
Age had no eect on biodiversity knowledge, but dierent age brackets showed signicantly
dierent opinion regarding wildlife-lifestyle balance in Sapporo (p < .01 based on Monte Carlo
simulation with 1,000,000 samples). Increasing age (in years) also had a signicant, moderate
negative eect on willingness to coexist with plants in Sapporo (rs = -.29) and willingness to coexist
wi th animals i n Br isbane (rs = -. 37 ). All thr ee age-related e e cts ex hibited a simil ar pat te rn : favouring
wildlife protection over lifestyle (Sapporo) as well as willingness to coexist with plants (Sapporo) and
animals (Brisbane) peaked in the 30 to 40 and 40 to 50 years age bracket to fall o with increasing
age. The 80+ year age bracket in Sapporo represented the only exception, as its opinion about
wildlife-lifestyle balance was strongly in favour of wildlife protection and more similar to the 30 to
50 years age bracket.
Pathways to coexistence: moving from conict to encounters on neutral ground
Residents’ familiarity with the meaning of the word ‘biodiversity’ in Sapporo was similar to levels
reported in an earlier survey in Sapporo (Sapporo Shichō Seisakujitsu Kōhōbu Shimin No Koe O Kiku
Ka 2011) and slightly lower than the European average of 38% in 2010 (European Commission 2010).
In comparison, familiarity was extremely high (94%) in Brisbane, but no data are available for Australia
that would allow a direct comparison. The high familiarity could be a result of public debates around
wildlife conicts, in which nativeness plays a prominent role (Trigger & Head 2010). In contrast, the
dierence between the cities was far less pronounced in residents’ attitudes towards nature and their
opinion about wildlife protection and human lifestyle (Rupprecht et al. 2015b). This result is also
reected in a previous analysis of attitudes towards urban nature, where Brisbane and Sapporo
respondents showed only limited dierences in the value they attribute to urban nature (Rupprecht
et al. 2015b). This could suggest that ‘technical’ knowledge about biodiversity is at best a weak mediator
of attitudes towards wildlife. Moreover, these results do not reect the pronounced dierence in
Topic Questions asked (1=str. agree, 5=str. disagree) Brisbane
Sapporo
p*
Greenspace in
neighbourhood
There should be more green space in my neighbourhood.
2.11 2.40 <0.01
The green space in my neighbourhood is very important to
me.
1.68 1.85 <0.05
Knowledge about
neighbourhood nature
I know a lot about the wild plants in my neighbourhood. 3.18 3.71 <0.001
I know a lot about the wild animals in my neighbourhood.
2.84 3.67 <0.001
I know a lot about the birds in my neighbourhood. 2.75 3.66 <0.001
Attitude towards urban
nature (derived from
NEP)
Urban nature has value within itself, regardless of any value
humans may place on it.
1.66 1.76 n.s.
We have an obligation to preserve urban nature for future
generations.
1.60 1.66 n.s.
I would contribute money to preserve urban nature. 2.51 2.92 <0.001
Urban animals and plants have as much right as humans to
exist.
2.04 2.31 <0.01
* Significant difference level between Brisbane and Sapporo sample means using Mann-Whitney U tests.
Table 3. Means of residents’ views on close greenspace, their knowledge about nature, and disposition
towards urban nature (adopted from Rupprecht et al. 2015b).

150 FENNIA 195: 2 (2017)Research paper
Fig. 1. Brisbane respondents’ preferences for animals in their neighbourhood.
Fig. 2. Sapporo respondents’ preferences for animals in their neighbourhood.

FENNIA 195: 2 (2017) 151Christoph D. D. Rupprecht
attitudes one might expect from previous research by Kellert (1991, 1993), who reported less ethical
or ecological concern for nature and wildlife among Japanese citizens compared to citizens of the
United States of America or Germany. However, the low response rate in this study limits the degree
to which these results can be generalised.
Sex did not inuence opinion about wildlife-lifestyle balance or score for general willingness to
coexist. It seemed similarly unimportant for respondents’ attitude toward particular animals. These
results diverge from previous studies, which reported gender as a signicant inuence factor (Bjerke
et al. 1998a, 1998b; Bjerke & Østdahl 2004; Almeida et al. 2014; Borgi & Cirulli 2015).
Fig. 3. Brisbane and Sapporo respondents’ perceived places of belonging for animals.
Fig. 4. Brisbane and Sapporo respondents’ perceived places of belonging for plants.

152 FENNIA 195: 2 (2017)Research paper
Education increased willingness to coexist to some degree, as has been shown for species
preferences (Bjerke & Østdahl 2004). This suggests there may be an argument to be made for
educational campaigns to foster interspecies relationships. However, for non-charismatic species
such eor ts may not always produce the desired eect . In a st ud y on st udents’ perceptions of black-
tailed prairie dogs, Fox-Parrish and Jurin (2008, 7) reported students’ thoughts revealed ‘little to no
concern for prairie dogs or their well-being’ – despite numerous classroom- and eld-based
educational activities.
Questions remain about the observed trend towards higher willingness to coexist with younger
age. Does this result suggest a shift in values over generations? Alternatively, do individuals’ attitudes
toward animals change over their lifetime? For the latter, Bjerke and Østdahl (2004) found a
signicant but minute eect for individual species preferences. Yet data in this area remains scarce,
and further research could help planners take such aspects into account if necessary.
Global and local animals, contested urban space
As we enter the Anthropocene, the animals and plants we encounter in cities are becoming increasingly
similar (Wittig & Becker 2010; Lososová et al. 2012), though urbanisation can also drive local increases
in species richness (Ellis et al. 2012). While the dierences in animals named in the two cities in this
study were still larger than the similarities, four groups of animals characterised by two distinctions
emerged – local and global, wanted and unwanted animals. To understand respondents’ preferences
for sharing their neighbourhood with particular species, it helps to look at the species in each group
and think about how urban space and its human order is contested by animals. Globally wanted
animals (birds and especially small birds, butteries) and locally wanted animals (squirrels) rarely
contest our use of cities, even if the reason for this could be their scarcity and endangered status
(lizards, koalas). In contrast, globally unwanted animals (e.g. rats, foxes, snakes, crows, feral dogs and
cats as well as pigeons) are those who defy our considerable eorts to exterminate them. They do well
living alongside us in cities, despite our antipathy (Lambert 2016), and prove human claims of
dominance and control wrong. Locally unwanted animals (e.g. bears, deer, dingos and monkeys) draw
our attention to the contested and shifting nature of urban boundaries, especially in the absence of
material symbols in the form of city walls. Bears visiting Sapporo from the surrounding mountain
forests are one such example where our dominance over urban space is threatened – occasionally,
authorities are forced to declare local parks declared o-limits for residents (Sapporo Kankyōkyoku
Midori No Suishinbu 2013). Their size may also explain why they featured more prominently than
insects, which were comparatively underrepresented in residents’ preferences. The smaller the
organism, the less powerful to challenge us we may perceive it to be, or else we would be forced to
concede defeat to microorganisms immediately. For Sapporo, linguistics could provide another clue.
The Japanese word for animal used in the survey (動物, dōbutsu) can be interpreted not to include
insects (虫, mushi).
In Brisbane, nativeness played a role almost completely absent in Sapporo. Non-native animals
(rabbits, cane toads, feral cats) appear to violate not only a physical, but also a place-specic
ideological boundary by trespassing into spaces where they are perceived not to belong. This
phenomenon has been reported and discussed previously (Trigger & Head 2010). Yet some non-
native animals enjoy wide acceptance (cattle, sheep, chickens), while others gain little sympathy
from their native status (snakes, bats, dingos). The ideological boundaries of nativeness are thus as
contested and shifting as their material urban counterparts (Trigger et al. 2008).
Qualifying adjectives (e.g. feral, wild, dangerous, large, scar y) in the qualitative comments from
respondents further support the idea that respondents’ preferences for animals are related to how
animals contest urban space. However, some comments also demonstrate empathy with the plight of
ur ba n animals. Respondents ex pr es se d sa dn es s about interspecies conict and harm do ne to animals
by humans, or insisted on animals’ protection as a priority alongside preventing harm to humans.
Others emphasized the concept of animals ‘out of place’, of not-belonging, for example voicing their
preference for bears to live ‘a bit more in the mountains’. Such comments suggest that urban areas
that ar e les s rm ly occu pie d as human sp ace i n our imagin ati on may po int t oward ways for c oncil iat ion.

FENNIA 195: 2 (2017) 153Christoph D. D. Rupprecht
Spaces of belonging – informal green spaces as territories of encounter?
If our conict with animals and plants arises from contested space and dominance, where in the city
do non-humans belong? Where are we willing to relax our claims of dominance? After arguably non-
urban spaces such as forests or bushlands, respondents chose IGS as the urban spaces they thought
animals and wild plants should be able to live in. Could IGS be one potential path leading to more-
than-human cities? Recently, scholars have begun looking toward such urban wildscapes (Jorgensen
& Keenan 2012) and terrain vague (Barron & Mariani 2013) as loose spaces (Franck & Stevens 2007),
unclaimed territories (Cloke & Jones 2005) where normal restrictions and expectations hold less
power, as liminal nature that doesn’t ‘belong’ to humans (Rupprecht et al., 2015b). Neither formally
recognized by governing institutions or property owners as greenspace designated for agriculture,
forestry, gardening, recreation or environmental protection, the vegetation and fauna in IGS is not
managed for any of these purposes (Rupprecht & Byrne 2014a). As a result, IGS can provide habitat
and support urban biodiversity (Rupprecht et al. 2015a), though its ecology as a novel ecosystem is
distinct from historic ecosystems or nature reserves (Hobbs et al. 2006). Unclaimed, IGS may provide
‘territories of encounter’1 with an uniquely urban ecosystem of undomesticated plants and animals,
an opportunity for a being-together from childhood and teen age (Rupprecht et al. 2016) to adulthood
(Rupprecht & Byrne 2014b; Rupprecht et al. 2015b).
Urban residents can perceive these spaces and the lack of control both positively and negatively
(Rink & Emmrich 2005; Qviström 2012; Rupprecht et al. 2015b). However, a more tolerant, sharing
approach of coexistence in the city may require turning away from the bucolic ideal and intent to
improve the users’ health and morals that underlie traditional green spaces (Rosenzweig & Blackmar
1992; Baldwin 1999). As Nohl (1990, 62) argues:
“Nature, mostly self-regulating, and self-determinedly acting users are the ones nding their way
to a conciliatory coexistence in these dysfunctional-useless spaces. The realization giving extra
weight to this utopian moment is that this aesthetic appearance may be a glimpse at a possible
future alternative, rather than an unattainable ideal: the aesthetic joy of urban wasteland has its
origins in the fact that this wasteland, as a devastated (as everyone can see) part of the contemporary
city, is still showing self-organizing life, and is thus able to symbolize a better future. […] Because in
the interplay [of human use and the developmental processes of nature] the aesthetic-symbolically
experienced ‘whole nature’, the partner-relationship between humans and nature, contrasts
markedly with the aggressive dominance over nature omnipresent elsewhere in the city. […] The
aesthetic joy the observer experiences when looking at such open spaces can be explained by the
fact that he has discovered an actually possible image of a more conciliatory world.” (translated
from German)
In contrast to nature reserves or parks, the rules of our encounter with animals and plants in these
territories of encounter are not pre-negotiated, not controlled by park rangers or fences. This can
open up possibilities for exploration, renegotiation and possibly even reconguration of our mutual
entanglement. According to Nohl (1990, 65), IGS could thus provide the potential for a ‘provisional
arrangement’ that leaves room for both emancipated greenspace users and nature, because ‘it
disciplines neither people in their actions nor nature in its development’.
Does IGS then undermine the dualism of urban and nature, or on the contrary reinforce it? As
previous work shows (Rupprecht et al. 2015b), residents seemed to both value the breakdown of
clear demarcations between intentional green space and struggle with its informality. On an
individual level of engagement, I therefore argue encounters with IGS can prompt residents to
rethink urban nature. At this point, critical readers might ask: should IGS be endorsed simply
because it is (sometimes) easy for (some) people to accept? Does not shared urban living demand
more than this? These questions can be understood as an issue of what is right or ideal versus
concrete progress (even if slow). Non-violent coexistence is by no means sucient as a nal goal for
human-non-human co-inhabitation to strive for. Yet at the moment, systematic suppression and
institutionalised killing still characterises all too many human-non-human relations (Hillier & Byrne
2016). Establishing of neutral zones where non-violent coexistence is tolerated or even encouraged
would therefore be a meaningful and substantial step towards ‘making kin, not cities’ (Houston et al.
2017), particularly because the diculties inherent in even such small advances are something

154 FENNIA 195: 2 (2017)Research paper
urban planning and political ecology scholars have repeatedly documented. That said, the real
challenges lie beyond the individual and at the planning and institutional level, as outlined below.
IGS in planning and management: opportunities and challenges
As data from Sapporo and Brisbane shows, IGS can account for 14% of total urban green space of
cities (Rupprecht & Byrne 2014a), making it an important element of the urban landscape. As discussed
elsewhere (Rupprecht et al. 2015b; Rupprecht 2017), planners could help making the territories of
encounter more accessible by reducing barriers or mapping such spaces, but a number of constraints
(liability issues, private ownership, historical/political/nancial constraints) limit planner’s ability for
direct interventions. Therefore, participative management approaches could help to avoid outcomes
like the New York High Line, where IGS was simply converted into neoliberal green space, demonstrating
how the fascination and promise of engaging with ‘wild’ nonhumans can be reduced to its aesthetic
appeal in the name of capitalism (Millington 2015). In a way, the High Line thus presents an extreme
case of a carefully landscaped space posing as IGS, a space that is precisely so easy to accept (and thus
preferred by its visitors) because benches, pathways and design provide clear demarcations. On the
High Line, contrary to IGS, wildness is performed, encounters are pre-negotiated, provisional
arrangements are no longer possible, nature is disciplined. To what degree can the urban-nature
dualism then be overcome through planning and management?
One possible approach is to facilitate participatory management of IGS (Rupprecht 2017), thereby
allowing residents to explore their individual taste for coexistence, rather than planners setting the
ground rules in advance. Planners can draw upon the results of this study which suggest urban
residents’ willingness to coexist with wildlife is inuenced by species, geography, cultural factors,
education and age (but not income or sex). Mapping wanted and unwanted animals (Figure 1, 2)
could help planners to focus management eorts on locally most prominent species, oering a
better insight into residents’ preferences than current contestation-focused wildlife conict reports.
Understanding where residents’ preferences overlap or dier from municipal conservation
strategies could identify potential synergies or problems. Small-scale maps could help tailor
management towards individual neighbourhoods. Tracking such information over time may also
allow planners and wildlife managers to intervene before conicts escalate. Green space design
could draw on residents’ species preferences, for example by retrotting features that attract birds
or butteries (e.g. wildower meadows). Similarly, knowing where residents think animals and wild
plants should be able to live (and where not) could allow managing wildlife interactions dierently
for the city centre, parks or IGS. Cultural factors such as the dierent role of nativeness may help
planners to understand which points to emphasize in communicating with residents in conservation
or wildlife management projects. Finally, planners and developers could aim to design projects for
particular age groups (e.g. retirement housing or child care centres) by taking into account dierent
age groups’ species preferences and general willingness to coexist with wildlife. Recent work by
Houston and colleagues (2017) fur ther discusses how planning theory might contribute.
Conclusion and directions for further research
In this study, I attempt to answer calls from scholars to look for paths towards more-than-human
cities. Using a quantitative approach, I reported results from an exploratory survey in Brisbane,
Australia, and Sapporo, Japan, which asked residents about their willingness to coexist with wildlife,
their preferences for undomesticated animals in their neighbourhood, and perceived places of
belonging for animals and plants. While the low response rate of the study limits the extent to which
these results can be generalised, the sample used was sucient for this exploratory study. Geographical
and cultural context alongside respondents’ educational attainment and age inuenced their
willingness to coexist with wildlife, but not sex and income. Mapping respondents’ preferences for
animals in their neighbourhood, identied global and local as well as wanted and unwanted groups of
animals. These categories diered in the way the animals contested the human notions of control over
urban space. Most respondents chose IGS as the space where animals and wild plants should be living

FENNIA 195: 2 (2017) 155Christoph D. D. Rupprecht
in the city after forests and bushland. Drawing upon recent theoretical and empirical work by scholars
suggesting that IGS is less restricted by expectations for human control, I proposed IGS as the territories
of encounter and one potential path to more-than-human cities. In particular, I argued with Nohl
(1990) that these spaces can oer ‘provisional arrangements’ that allow us to engage with nonhumans
in a conciliatory way. Finally, I discussed some ways planners could work with IGS and quantitative
methods of understanding interspecies interactions to improve planning and management.
This study has helped to identify a number of directions for further research. First, this study has
focused on animals, leaving open the question whether plants are similarly perceived as challenging
the human control of space. Second, recent history has seen a surge in human-animal related
literature, catalogued by the excellent Animal Studies Living Bibliography (n.d.), which exceeds the
space of a review as part of a paper introduction and merits one or more dedicated reviews to
complement the two previous ones by Buller (2014, 2015). Third, researchers should investigate
what role factors that fell outside of the scope of this study might play in mediating residents’
willingness to coexist with animals: urban density; the presence of, access to and use of greenspace;
if people’s values inuenced their decisions about where they live; whether living in a particular
place or particular human-animal interactions have altered their views; whether particular animals
are viewed as belonging in particular places; and whether observed or perceived animal presence
in the neighbourhood inuence residents’ answers. Fourth, examining pet-mediated human-non-
pet relations might shine light on their possible role as either conict mediators or (as observed in
pet-wildlife interactions) a source of additional conict. Fifth, not limiting the number of animals
identied by respondents as wanted or unwanted could help identify individual variations in
willingness to coexist on the human side, and provide insights into whether the patterns of
preference for certain species among ‘animal lovers’ and those less so-inclined. Finally, the biggest
challenge remains: to turn the direction of inquiry around and nd a way to discern how non-human
preferences drive where, how, and whom they share or contest spaces.
Notes
1 The term ‘territories of encounter’ was not included in the survey instrument and is oered here as
a provocative reframing of space often seen as derelict or wasted.
Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful: to Yumi Nakagawa for invaluable help with data collection, the Japanese survey
instrument and data entry, to Kumiko Nakagawa for assistance with the Japanese survey instrument
and Japanese qualitative responses, to Jason Byrne for guidance and friendship throughout the
project, to Hirofumi Ueda for assistance with the Japanese survey instrument and data collection in
Sapporo, to Bill Metcalf for advice on research design, to Ruth Potts for helpful comments on the
manuscript, to all respondents for participating and making this study possible, to the Association of
American Geographers Urban Geography Specialty Group for awarding an earlier version of this
paper the 2016 Dissertation Award, and to reviewers for their helpful comments. This research was
supported by Grith University and by the FEAST Project (No. 14200116), Research Institute for
Humanity and Nature (RIHN).
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