From its earliest days as a fur-trading outpost to its heyday as a livestock center and current configuration as a city of pet lovers and barbecue aficionados, animals have been central to Kansas City’s identity and landscape. In fact, KC can more accurately be described as a “zoopolis,” a multi-species urban location, than a standard metropolis. Local geographer Julie Urbanik lends new a new way of looking at our city, examining the web of past and present connections between its human and animal inhabitants and recasting the traditional, human-centric stories that portray people as the only principals. In essence, she says, Kansas City would not be Kansas City without its animals – cattle, horses, mules, and even the zoo’s popular polar bears, Nikita and Berlin.