New book on Ethical Cities - Coming Soon

Photo of a bas relief in Hong Kong’s Sai Ying Pun metro station by artist, Louise Soloway Chan. Louise kindly gave permission to use her artwork on the cover of our book.

I am breaking one of my own conventions right now. I don’t usually post here directly and instead normally share commentaries that I have published elsewhere.

Also, it has been a while since my last commentary. The good news explaining my lack of posts is that I have just submitted an Ethical Cities manuscript to Routledge. The book has been written in collaboration with Ralph Horne and John Fien, involving lots of Skype sessions and sharing versions of chapters via email and dropbox.

Perhaps one positive aspect of the Covid-19 pandemic is that we all had more time to spend writing and editing. Conversely, however, it was very difficult to write a book under these circumstances because most of our normal assumptions about how the world works have been turned upside down during the past few months.

For those interested, our book is available for pre-order from Routledge, and there will be paperback, hardback and e-book versions.

We talked a lot about various options for the book cover and we all agreed that it should be very people focused. I came across a photo I took in Hong Kong during a visit there in 2018. Many of you may know this already but there is a truly amazing bas-relief in the Sai Ying Pun metro station, which just happened to be around the corner from my hotel. Everyday, I would spend time looking at the different scenes. My overall impression was that the artist really loves Hong Kong, and very successfully captured in her art the amazing energy, colour and life of the city. So I wrote to the artist, Louise Soloway Chan, and she negotiated permission with Hong Kong Metro. It is an extraordinary piece of art and the story behind is fascinating.

The photo on the final book cover was unanimously agreed by the three authors and our editor at Routledge.

Cities are people. They are full of colour, noise, energy and life.

So what is in the book?

The book description is as follows: “Combining elements of sustainable and resilient cities agendas, together with those from social justice studies, and incorporating concerns about good governance, transparency and accountability, the book presents a coherent conceptual framework for the ethical city, in which to embed existing and new activities within cities so as to guide local action.”

We are presenting the ethical city as a “logical next step for critical urbanism in the era of late capitalism, characterized by divisive politics, burgeoning inequality, widespread technology-induced disruptions to every aspect of modern life, and existential threats posed by climate change, sustainability imperatives and pandemics.” One of our concerns is that “relentless disruption” could well be the new normal, and the challenge is how we can adapt collectively.

The book is divided into 9 chapters. We begin by outlining the rational for the ethical city. This is followed by a discussion of the notion of the right to the city, which provides an important theoretical frame for the rest of the book.

Next, we briefly review ethical philosophy and contextualize its application to cities. We continue with an examination of key interests shaping the ethical city and present examples of how it may be possible to measure or assess progress along this trajectory. Subsequently, our focus shifts to contemporary thinking around different orientations for cities such as competitive, liveable and fragile, providing context for where an ethical orientation might fit in.

In the next chapter, we discuss a range of disruptive forces associated with unmanageable technological innovation, shifts in economic patterns and various existential threats, as mentioned above. The book concludes with reflections on ethical urban futures and how (or why) they manifest.

At the start of each chapter we pay homage to Italo Calvino’s classic 1972 book Invisible Cities with short epigraphs that are either a quote from his book or from one of his speeches. In case you haven’t read it yet, Invisible Cities stimulates our imagination and reflection on what cities have been, are and could be. It also inspires our proposition that by looking again at the city, this time through an ethical lens, it may be possible to make visible the invisible elements that undermine urban living for many.

What is next?

Although we have been working around the theme of ethical cities for nearly five years, we still feel we have only scratched the surface of this conceptual framework and its’ practical application. We have collected a lot examples from cities across the globe that we consider reflect different aspects of the ethical city. While many cities are moving in the right direction, the ethical city remains a destination in a long journey. We hope to continue research and writing on this topic, and have plans for follow-up books.

However, we also recognize that this idea has been attracting a lot of attention recently and for further reading we would recommend Richard Sennett’s Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City and Jeffrey Chan’s Urban Ethics in the Anthropocene: The Moral Dimensions of Six Emerging Conditions in Contemporary Urbanism. Both books were published in 2018 and it is completely coincidental that Chan’s book and this blog have “anthropocene” in the title.

There is also another book coming this year from Routledge edited by Moritz Egle and Johannes Moser with the title Urban Ethics: Conflicts over the Good and Proper Life in Cities. It looks very interesting and contributes to a growing body of literature of ethical cities and urban ethics.

Over the next few months, I hope to share more commentaries on the theme of the ethical city.