Zoöpolis'i tasarlamak: Türler arası bakımın tasarımına dair temellendirilmiş bir kuram

Based on a 5-year fieldwork (2019–2024) employing Situational Analysis informed by Constructivist Grounded Theory, this research presents a substantive theory of design for interspecies care in Istanbul's feline interventionist arena. This arena is characterized by human interventions, designerly or otherwise, deemed a moral imperative in response to present or imminent feline events—frictions between the anthropocentric city and the feline user, implicated on a dependency-autonomy continuum. Central to this arena is a three-partite community-driven feline spatial population management (CDFSPM), including designing of cat houses, as a care-based response to the neglect of municipal veterinary departments (MVDs) and societal apathy. To contain imminent feline events foreseeable in the future, all eligible cats regardless of sex are subject to nonselective neutering as part of population control. In addition, while cats with heightened dependency transition from public space to private households during selective defelinization, human proxies actively engage in a process of refelinization by design, reshaping the urban landscape to support feline cohabitation for cats deemed independent and able. Feline non-use of cat houses discloses species script, that is, the epistemic limitations of human configuration of the animal user. Despite divergent positions regarding their functionality, cat houses not only point to Zoöpolis as a political horizon due to their symbolic function owing to their emphasis on liminal animal belonging in the city but also design a multi-species and care-based urban living here and now.