Blog Feed: The Ethics of Metropolitan Growth

Fair-Weather Buildings

Published on 2012-04-18 08:26:00

I went to bed last night thinking today would be dismal. A cold front was approaching Atlanta, and rain was forecast to start just after midnight and continue into the afternoon. I imagined a heavy, dark sky and a dispiriting slog through puddles to get to the train.What I failed to take into account is that it isn't winter any more. I stepped outside this morning into a light rain shower. Birds were singing, and the sky was just that kind of gray that makes colors more vivid.That was in my own [..] > read more

Quick Take: From a Distance

Published on 2012-02-17 06:00:00

A minor theme may be emerging in my choice of things to photograph for this blog: things in the built environment that project one image when glimpsed in passing or viewed from a distance, but that reveal something quite different on closer inspection. Walter Benjamin had his "Arcades Project," so maybe this could be "The Facades Project."Today's exhibit is the Carnegie Education Pavilion in Hardy Ivy Park, along Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta.From a distance, approaching on foot or drivin [..] > read more

The Bafflement of Colleagues

Published on 2012-02-14 06:00:00

I recently wrote to an economist colleague to request some references on the idea of moral hazard as it has made its way into economics form the insurance industry. I have since found further references by other means, but my request sparked an exchange in which I found myself confronted by puzzlement on the part of my colleague . . . and a pressing need to further clarify what I mean by the tragic outlook, and what some critics have meant when they said such an outlook poses a moral hazard.One [..] > read more

Self-Sufficiency

Published on 2012-02-07 06:00:00

Following up on an aside in my first post on Brown's book, I'd like to consider an essential question of ethics and political philosophy: What is the smallest self-sufficient unit of human life?For myself, I lean to the ancient account, from Plato and Aristotle: the smallest self-sufficient unit of human life is the city, that is, the polis, which entails community and political order as well as geographic proximity and economic interdependence. An adult human being may indeed be able to eke ou [..] > read more

14 Days and Counting . . .

Published on 2012-02-03 06:00:00

I have been continuing to read Wendy Brown's book, Surviving the Apocalypse in the Suburbs, though sporadically. My train commute really isn't all that long, and I've had many, many other things to read in the mean time.I have small addition to my review-in-progress of the book, which merges with the theme from my last post: skepticism.Imagine I came to believe the world as we know it really would end in 21 days and, following my own priorities, I decide to meet my neighbors and to work toward g [..] > read more

The Last Man

Published on 2012-01-31 07:00:00

I'm currently at work developing a new paper, which I hope will be the first publication from my investigation of the tragic outlook in the ethics of the built environment.Since I cannot, yet, take on the whole thing at once I have, for the purposes of this paper, narrowed the focus down to the charge that, by attempting to promulgate a tragic outlook, I am guilty of creating a moral hazard.(I first mentioned the charge here.)The argument goes something like this: If you give people reason to th [..] > read more

21 Days and Counting

Published on 2012-01-27 12:09:00

I could hardly resist buying and reading a book titled Surviving the Apocalypse in the Suburbs. It falls into that happy category I call "train reading": engaging enough to hold my attention at the beginnings and ends of work days, but not so demanding that I can't break off from it when I have to change trains or start walking.The author, Wendy Brown, is a writer and homeschooler living in New England.The premise of the book is straightforward: imagine you live in a house in the American suburb [..] > read more

Quick Take: Move Along! Nothing Unusual Here!

Published on 2012-01-24 14:52:00

I walk by this building in Midtown Atlanta nearly every day, on my way to and from work. The bank that once occupied the building has moved to a newer, larger, altogether shinier building about a block away.(Incidentally, the new bank building is a one-story structure on a site once occupied by a multi-story office building. This seems counter to recent trends in Midtown toward greater density, but that's an issue for another time.)Notice the windows of the vacant building. It has, in effect, be [..] > read more

Why Worry?

Published on 2011-12-30 11:30:00

As the year draws to a close, I have been looking back over my various posts on the tragic outlook, to draw together the main threads of the discussion and to set a research agenda for the new year.It strikes me that I have left an essential question unanswered, though I posed it in my post of 11/11/11.I raised two question at the beginning of that post:First, what has the tragic outlook to do with ethics in the built environment? Second, what do I mean by 'outlook'?I suggested, very briefly, th [..] > read more

A Bizarrely Incomprehensible Post

Published on 2011-12-20 06:00:00

As long as I am acknowledging my intellectual debts, I should pay tribute to a writer who had an early, deep, and not entirely explicable influence on my outlook on the world: Douglas Adams.Yes, it does seem strange to be writing this. The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is not exactly part of the canon of essential philosophical treatises.It's very funny, of course, and has tremendous appeal to people of a certain culture who went through adolescence in the 1980s, but is it really worthy of s [..] > read more

From the Archive: From the Margins (1991), part two

Published on 2011-12-16 06:00:00

With my presentation at the Earth Day Forum in 1991, I took a few, tentative steps toward a phenomenology of place intended to inform a practical environmental ethic.I mainly focused on a pervasive theme in Berry's work, a theme made explicit in his essay, "Preserving Wildness" (1987): the intertwining of the domestic and the wild in the landscapes we inhabit, and even in our own bodies. Wildness pervades our experience, at the margins of the domestic realm, the boundaries between landscapes.Loo [..] > read more

On Expertise: A Reply to King

Published on 2011-05-27 14:09:00

The first published review of the book has come out, in the Spring 2011 issue of the journal Environmental Ethics. The review was written by Roger J.H. King.It is certainly gratifying to read a sympathetic and largely positive review. King seems to u > read more

Vulnerability and Gratitude

Published on 2011-04-01 10:48:00

Here, at last, are some thoughts on the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, events which bring sharply into focus the natural dynamics that give shape to the places in which we pursue our projects, but that can sometimes overpower us and overturn all ou > read more

Nature and Culture (on the way to Calamity)

Published on 2011-03-17 16:24:00

I still aim to write an entry or two about the calamity in Japan but, along the way, I have stumbled across a puzzle in the pages of my own book.In Chapter 2, as I develop an experiential approach to decision making in the built environment, I descri > read more

Natural Evil, from Lisbon to Minamisanriku

Published on 2011-03-16 09:52:00

I am developing an entry prompted by the ongoing calamity in Japan and also by the recent upheaval in Christchurch, New Zealand. It may take a little time to gather together what I've been thinking concerning the vulnerability of place as an exten > read more

Consumerism and The Good Life

Published on 2011-01-06 15:29:00

I've written before about Aristotle's Politics, focusing on passages in Book VII that connect the details of urban planning - the layout of streets, for example - with prospects for the happiness of a polis and its citizens.Well, I find myself once a > read more

Little Boxes

Published on 2010-11-17 11:11:00

Yesterday I attended the 2010 Legislative Roundtable at Georgia Tech, organized jointly by the Georgia Tech Research Institute and the Technology Association of Georgia. The purpose of the event was to bring together business leaders and state legisl > read more

The Karori Sanctuary and the Fragility of Place

Published on 2010-10-21 11:13:00

What follows is the abstract of a talk I will be giving at the University of Utah next month; it's a further development on one aspect of my first post on the topic. I welcome all comments and suggestions. How do we secure what we value and meet our > read more

On Luckie Street

Published on 2010-08-27 08:49:00

I've starting riding my bike as part of my regular commute to work.For most of the past eight years, I have strung together three modes of transportation - foot, bus, and train - in various combinations. Sometimes I would walk to a bus stop, ride the > read more

Hole in the Ground

Published on 2010-08-25 17:50:00

This post is a little bit off-topic, but I suppose it has to do with normative questions that arise when a small group of people is forced by circumstance to inhabit a particular place. I am thinking in particular of the 33 men trapped more than 2000 > read more

CNU 18: The Big Green Box

Published on 2010-05-21 16:44:00

By and large, to specialize in one (sub-)discipline or practice is to regard the concerns of all other disciplines and practices as existing in black boxes. The labels on those boxes may be invoked from time to time, but the contents of those boxes, > read more

CNU 18: Gettin' Schooled

Published on 2010-05-20 20:09:00

So, here I am at the 18th Congress for the New Urbanism, which has come this year to Atlanta.Yesterday, before the Congress officially convened, I attended a session entitled New Urbanism 101, which is designed to give newcomers an orientation to the > read more

The Karori Sanctuary: Public Participation

Published on 2010-05-13 08:37:00

In Diane Campbell-Hunt's book about the development of the Karori Sanctuary, I note a persistent duality in her portrayal of "the public" and its role in the project. This is captured almost perfectly in the title of the fifth chapter: "Public > read more

Ecotechnological Environment

Published on 2010-05-12 09:19:00

Here's an intriguing idea from historian of technology Thomas P. Hughes, set out in his 2004 book, Human-Built World.People in industrialized nations have too narrow an understanding of technology, writes Hughes.We are satisfied to see it used mostly > read more

Mr. Sherlock Holmes Holds Forth on Safety in the Built Environment

Published on 2010-05-04 21:31:00

I have had reason recently to think again about safety and the perception of safety in particular places. At one point, very early in The Ethics of Metropolitan Growth, I discuss some of the difficulties of ethical deliberation, especially when other > read more