Urban Ethics Under Conditions Of Crisis Politics Architecture Landscape Sustainability And Multidisciplinary Engineering

Urban Ethics under Conditions of Crisis investigates the states of urban planning, architectural design, sustainability, landscape architecture, and engineering, and examines their correlation with social attitudes and dispositions that can impact on socio-cultural and political engagement internationally in conditions of crisis. The theme of the book emphasizes the need to acknowledge the controversial character of contemporary social life under critical social conditions, in correlation with urban space. It concerns the evaluation of critical issues such as:

This book delves into the ethical dimension of urban life: how should one live in the city? What constitutes a ‘good’ life under urban condition? Whose gets to live a ‘good’ life, and whose ideas of morality, propriety and ‘good’ prevail? What is the connection between the ‘good’ and the ‘just’ in urban life? Rather than philosophizing the ‘good’ and proper life in cities, the book considers what happens when urban conflicts and urban futures are carried out as conflicts over the good and proper life in cities. It offers an understanding of how ethical discourses, ideals and values are harmonized with material interests of different groups, taking up cases studies about environmental protection, co-housing schemes, political protest, heritage preservation, participatory planning, collaborative art production, and other topics from different eras and parts of the globe. This book offers multidisciplinary insights, ethnographic research and conceptual tools and resources to explore and better understand such conflicts. It questions the ways in which urban ethics draw on tacit moral economies of urban life and the ways in which such moral economies become explicit, political and programmatic. Chapters 1 and 11 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book provides an outline for a multidisciplinary research agenda into urban ethics and offers insights into the various ways urban ethics can be configured. It explores practices and discourses through which individuals, collectives and institutions determine which developments and projects may be favourable for dwellers and visitors traversing cities. Urban Ethics as Research Agenda widens the lens to include other actors apart from powerful individuals or institutions, paying special attention to activists or civil society organizations that express concerns about collective life. The chapters provide fresh perspectives addressing the various scales that converge in the urban. The uniqueness of each city is, thus, enriched with global patterns of the urban. Local sociocultural characteristics coexist with global flows of ideas, goods and people. The focus on urban ethics sheds light on emerging spaces of human development and the ways in which ethical narratives are used to mobilize and contest them in terms of the good life. This timely book analyses urban ethical negotiations from social and cultural studies, particularly drawing on anthropology, geography and history. This volume will be of interest to scholars, researchers and practitioners interested in ethics and urban studies.

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. The authors’ observations are derived from city-specific surveys and urban case studies. These reveal how progressive cities are promoting a diverse range of ethically informed approaches to urbanism, such as community wealth building, basic income initiatives, participatory budgeting and citizen assemblies. The text argues that the ethical city is a logical next step for critical urbanism in the era of late capitalism, characterised 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. Engaging with their communities in meaningful ways and promoting positive transformative change, ethical cities are well placed to deliver liveable and sustainable places for all, rather than only for wealthy elites. Likewise, the aftermath of shocks such as the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic reveals that cities that are not purposeful in addressing inequalities, social problems, unsustainability and corruption face deepening difficulties. Readers from across physical and social sciences, humanities and arts, as well as across policy, business and civil society, will find that the application of ethical principles is key to the pursuit of socially inclusive urban futures and the potential for cities and their communities to emerge from or, at least, ameliorate a diverse range of local, national and global challenges.

This book shapes a situated body politics to re-think, re-write, and de-colonise social work as a post-anthropocentric discipline headed towards glocalisation, where human and non-human embodiments and agencies are entangled in glocal environmental worlds. It critically and creatively examines how social work can be theorised, practised, and written in renewed ways through dialogical and transdisciplinary practices. This book is composed of eight essayistic spaces, envisioning social work through embodied, glocal, and earthly entanglements. By drawing on research-based knowledge, autobiographical notes, stories, poetry, photographs, and an art exhibition in social work education, these essays provide readers with analysis and strategies that are useful for research, education, and practice as well as life-long learning. The book constitutes key literature for researchers, educators, practitioners, and activists in social work, sociology, architecture, art and creative writing, feminist and postcolonial studies, human geography, and post-anthropocentric philosophy. It offers the readers sustainable ways to re-think and re-write social work towards a glocal- and post-anthropocentric more-than-human worldview.

This handbook addresses a growing list of challenges faced by regions and cities in the Pacific Rim, drawing connections around the what, why, and how questions that are fundamental to sustainable development policies and planning practices. These include the connection between cities and surrounding landscapes, across different boundaries and scales; the persistence of environmental and development inequities; and the growing impacts of global climate change, including how physical conditions and social implications are being anticipated and addressed. Building upon localized knowledge and contextualized experiences, this edited collection brings attention to place-based approaches across the Pacific Rim and makes an important contribution to the scholarly and practical understanding of sustainable urban development models that have mostly emerged out of the Western experiences. Nine sections, each grounded in research, dialogue, and collaboration with practical examples and analysis, focus on a theme or dimension that carries critical impacts on a holistic vision of city-landscape development, such as resilient communities, ecosystem services and biodiversity, energy, water, health, and planning and engagement. This international edited collection will appeal to academics and students engaged in research involving landscape architecture, architecture, planning, public policy, law, urban studies, geography, environmental science, and area studies. It also informs policy makers, professionals, and advocates of actionable knowledge and adoptable ideas by connecting those issues with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. The collection of writings presented in this book speaks to multiyear collaboration of scholars through the APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes (SCL) Program and its global network, facilitated by SCL Annual Conferences and involving more than 100 contributors from more than 30 institutions. The Open Access version of chapters 1, 2, 4, 11, 17, 23, 30, 37, 42, 49, and 56 of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003033530, have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Sustainable development within urban and rural areas, transportation systems, logistics, supply chain management, urban health, social services, and architectural design are taken into consideration in the cohesive network models provided in this book. The ideas, methods, and models presented consider city landscapes and quality of life conditions based on mathematical network models and optimization. Interdisciplinary Works from prominent researchers in mathematical modeling, optimization, architecture, engineering, and physics are featured in this volume to promote health and well-being through design. Specific topics include: - Current technology that form the basis of future living in smart cities - Interdisciplinary design and networking of large-scale urban systems - Network communication and route traffic optimization - Carbon dioxide emission reduction - Closed-loop logistics chain management and operation - Modeling the effect urban environments on aging - Health care infrastructure - Urban water system management - Architectural design optimization Graduate students and researchers actively involved in architecture, engineering, building physics, logistics, supply chain management, and mathematical optimization will find the interdisciplinary work presented both informative and inspiring for further research.

The proposal that the impact of humanity on the planet has left a distinct footprint, even on the scale of geological time, has recently gained much ground. Global climate change, shifting global cycles of the weather, widespread pollution, radioactive fallout, plastic accumulation, species invasions, the mass extinction of species - these are just some of the many indicators that we will leave a lasting record in rock, the scientific basis for recognizing new time intervals in Earth's history. The Anthropocene, as the proposed new epoch has been named, is regularly in the news. Even with such robust evidence, the proposal to formally recognize our current time as the Anthropocene remains controversial both inside and outside the scholarly world, kindling intense debates. The reason is clear. The Anthropocene represents far more than just another interval of geologic time. Instead, the Anthropocene has emerged as a powerful new narrative, a concept through which age-old questions about the meaning of nature and even the nature of humanity are being revisited and radically revised. This Very Short Introduction explains the science behind the Anthropocene and the many proposals about when to mark its beginning: the nuclear tests of the 1950s? The beginnings of agriculture? The origins of humans as a species? Erle Ellis considers the many ways that the Anthropocene's "evolving paradigm" is reshaping the sciences, stimulating the humanities, and foregrounding the politics of life on a planet transformed by humans. The Anthropocene remains a work in progress. Is this the story of an unprecedented planetary disaster? Or of newfound wisdom and redemption? Ellis offers an insightful discussion of our role in shaping the planet, and how this will influence our future on many fronts. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.