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# Urban Animal Density: Red Foxes and Emergent Sociality in the City

## Details

**Authors** Tom Fry

**Year** 2026

**Publisher** Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Geography

**Secondary disciplines** Ecology

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.70090) 
10.1111/tran.70090

## In authors' words

### Abstract

Density is widely considered a fundamental characteristic of cities, shaping and defining urban life. A recent seam of geographic research has sought to critically theorise density, arguing that it should be considered as more than a numerical descriptor, and instead as historically situated, politically produced and affectively experienced. But this literature is anthropocentric in its concerns, neglecting that most wild animals in cities also have high population densities. For many animals, living at high density is a similarly ubiquitous and foundational quality of urban life. This paper asks how urban animal density is produced, spatialised and generative of particular forms of sociality. It does so by investigating the lives of a group of red foxes living on an allotment in North East London. It makes three interlinked arguments. First, that urban animal density is produced through historically contingent and politically provisional socioecological patches. Second, that the ecological affordances of these patches are generative of novel forms of sociality amongst foxes themselves, which challenge conventional readings of fox social organisation. Third, that the geographies of urban density create routinised encounters between people and foxes through which emerge vernacular knowledges of each other as individual subjects. In doing so, it seeks to ecologise urban geography's understanding of density as a city-making process, and to understand animal density as a way in which the urban itself unfolds. The paper is drawn from in-depth ethological-ethnographic fieldwork, where I worked with local people to chart the everyday practices and socialities of red fox groups, and sought to amplify and affirm localised ecological knowledge.

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To investigate how urban animal density is produced, spatialized, and generative of particular forms of sociality, using red foxes as a case, and to extend critical theorizations of density beyond an anthropocentric focus.

### Who or what was studied (sample)

A group of red foxes living on an allotment site in North East London, studied together with local residents.

### How they did it (methods)

In-depth ethological-ethnographic fieldwork combining animal-behavior observation with ethnographic methods, tracking everyday fox practices and human-fox encounters over time.

### What they found (results)

High-density urban living was found to generate socioecological patches that produce novel forms of fox sociality departing from conventional accounts of fox social organization, and routinized human-fox encounters were found to generate mutual, vernacular 'knowledges' of each other as individual subjects.

## Commentary

### In short

The paper treats density as a whole-level condition that generates novel social forms among the individuals living within it, and shows that humans and foxes come to hold perspectives on each other as density-driven encounters recur.

**Patterns it shows** S, P

Shows the structure is there, Shows it makes a difference

**Added** 2026-09-13

**How to cite this** Tom Fry (2026). Urban Animal Density: Red Foxes and Emergent Sociality in the City. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.