There is always some moment when other thanhuman life bursts into presence amid the clamor of urban routine Appearing between concrete and tarmac emerging from tunnels and pipes on skyscrapers or in derelict sites Their actions even improvisations render the urban into a living formation
1 They too are waiting Commuters await buses and macaques for food from passersby
2 The urban comes to a halt Bullock drawing a cart of cement bags for a city under continual construction
Divisions between animal and infrastructure being and building are hardly tenable in contemporary urban worlds Yet many versions of urban theory continue to work with these tired divisions or worse still they simply brush aliveness aside as phenomena of little importance compared to the effects of capital planning and design
Inventing Lines 3 Macaques forge new pathways as they cross streets via cables some of which tap electricity surreptitiously
4 Breakthrough A dwelling in an informal settlement turned into a goat pen
5 Blue is cold Opening taps is a skill macaques acquire in the city
6 Intensities I Salvage New forms of foraging are beginning to emerge with urbanization
Cities are never settled They are sites of action and agitations of habits practices and happenings
7 Intensities II The metabolic economy explodes Chicken waste about to be transported to a prawn farm
8 Intensities III Pasture Cattle grazing in an ephemeral garbage heap
How do we summon interlocutors beyond the usual suspects animating urban theory
Encounter value London s non native parakeets spark an affective 9 commons into being
10 Trans actions Ice cream being offered to a macaque Spiritual merits are harnessed in return
11a b c The street in seven tempos Delhi
12 Unbound Wintering kites in Delhi s wholesale chicken market
Un Settled Non native Canada Geese Kensington Gardens London 13
Other than humans are not just vital presences but observant participants of the same world they inhabit with and alongside people
14 Hooves tyres wheels Reproducing everyday life in an informal settlement
15 What refuses to go away Waste collection depot Delhi