Ethical Cities Lecture - May 2021

Photo of artwork by Louise Soloway Chan, Sai Ying Pun Station, Hong Kong Metro

At the invitation of Marco Amati, Associate Professor in Sustainability and Urban Planning at RMIT University, I delivered an online talk to students enrolled in a course on Strategic Urban Planning. This involved me recording three videos and sharing them online with the students. In addition, a real-time tutorial was organized so that we could interact.

The three videos reflect some (not all) of the core ideas presented in the recent book on Ethical Cities that I co-authored with Ralph Horne and John Fien. For instance, I do not discuss the ethical city within the context of the right to the city (this was brilliantly elaborated by John in our book).

In part one, I talk about the notion of the ethical city in the context of the dominant model of the Neoliberal city. I refer to the works of a number of influential academics who inspired (and continue to inspire) our writing such as Mark Fisher, Peter Bloom, Wendy Brown, David Harvey, Anna Minton and Rowland Atkinson (although I only came across his writings after we were published).

Part two shifts gears somewhat to focus on disruptive forces that are currently impacting on cities - artificial intelligence and automation, climate change, economic crises and the pandemic. Four orientations for cities are introduced that dictate, to some degree, how well cities are able to cope with the consequences of these disruptions. Throughout our book, we have included quotes from Calvino’s Invisible Cities, who introduces the idea of the “inferno of living” which captures the essence contemporary urban life.

In part three of the talk, the ethical city is contrasted with the liveable city, posing the question of liveability for whom? It is important that we reflect upon the urban futures of those who find themselves in the least liveable cities - the fragile, feral and fragmented cities of the world. This leads to an emphasis of the notion of the fight-back, ethical city where disruptive forces are embraced head-on and their impacts are directed towards a progressive agenda..