An Urbanism - an overlooked field of the philosophical inquire

Vladan Klement

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to briefly introduce the philosphy of urbanism and
show the reasons, why the philosophers should be interested in this field. The paper is
supposed to have two parts - the descriptive one, and the quazi-normative one, in which
is the author arguing for the connection link between urbanism and moral philosophy of
Jesse Prinz. In the second part the author will be defending the connection between
moral emotions (sentiments) and the nature of urbanism thinking.

I. Is there a need for a philosophy of urbanism?

Most common misunderstanding with urbanism is that an urbanism is based in

technicalities which occure with architectonical questions. Urbanism is in this view
nothing more than searching for the best practical, economical and constructional
answers for the question "How we should build cities?".

This approach is mainly connected with functionalistic theory of urbanism. Its often-
quoted proponent, Le Corbusier, was the main author of The Athens Charter from 1933.
In his ideal city, there are different parts of the city with different utilization.1

The way, how to understand or use the concept of urbanism is not one-directed. In the
second half of the 20th century, the understanding of the whole concept of "city" has
changed. For example in 2003, The New Athens Charter emphasized city's "cultural
richness and diversity, resulting from their long history, linking the past through the
present to the future" or the value of "become connected in a multitude of meaningful
and functional networks".2

According to recent french authors like Thibaud Zuppinger, urbanism is not just a
technical problem, but it is a political and ideological question.3 Jan Gehl went even
more further, when he has declared following statement: "Studying people’s behavior in
public space can be compared to studying and structuring other forms of living
organisms."4

1 For more informations see Curtis, William. Modern architecture since 1900. Phaidon Press, 1986.
2 New Charter of Athens 2003. Available on WWW:
http://ectp-ceu.eu/index.php/en/component/content/article?id=85
3 See Zuppinger, Thibaud. Humanisme et urbanisme. In: L'habitat, un monde à l'échelle humaine. 2009, p. 1.
4 Gehl, Jan. Svarre, Birgitte. How to study public life. 2013, p. 5.
 This approach frequently joined with terms like open city, green city, smart city or
connected city. Symptomatically, Jan Gehl has named his most famous books "Cities for
People". This designation has its own reason. For example in the 1960s, mostly in the
western european developed countries5, there were a lot of activist movements, which
wanted to take the city out of cars' hands and give it back to people.

The most important spin, which was done in the last hundred years is the one that
changes the definiton of the problem of urbanism from architects to social sciences.

Gehl speaks about living organisms, but for the need of this article one can use this
metaphor in another way. Cities are like living organisms and architects and planners
are its surgeons and doctors. But as for human organisms you need some social scences
background, one should do the same with cities.

This metaphor is slippery, because the analogy doesn't precisely fit. Surgeons are not (in
the act of designing) building human bodies. The question if it is not that's why even
more motivating for the social sciences (if you create something from the dust, you
better think about it twice) will be left opened for the readers.

The topic of urbanism is not new in philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche was thinking about
problem of living in anthropo-technique connotations. The main principle can be
summarized as following: tell me how you reside and I will tell you which conception
of a man you hold.6

By using statistics of Barney Cohen we can answer Nietzsche's question.

In 2000, 47,1% of world's population was livin in urban areas. The prediction for the
year 2030 is that 60,8% of world's population will be living in those areas. 7 That means
leaving the old paradigm or thinking about cities i.e not to projecting cities and not
thinking about how to build it, but how to design and make it a pleasent place for living,
you can influent lifes of more than half human population.

Moreover, the distribution of world's urban population8 will be 79,5% in less developed

5 By this term the author means former members of European Union.

6 See Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra. Paris, GF – Flammarion, 2006, p. 217.
7 See Cohen, Barney. Urbanization in developing countries: Current trends, future projections, and key challenges
for sustainability. In: Technology in Society. Vol. 28, 20006. p. 63-80.
8 See Cohen, Barney. Urbanization in developing countries: Current trends, future projections, and key challenges
for sustainability. In: Technology in Society. Vol. 28, 20006. p. 63-80.
 regions9 and only 20,5% in more developed regions10.

The aim of this chapter was to stress the growing importance of cities and therefore of
an urbanism, which is directed from one organism to another one. Gehl uses for this link
the metaphor "First we shape the cities - then they shape us."11

For recapitulation: The role of cities in human lives is becoming more and more
important. The cities and growing and people are moving from rural areas to urban
areas. With the changed view on urbanism it turns out there is a scope for a philosophy
of urbanism. To be more straightforward, the answer for the question stated in a
headline of this chapter is positive - there is a need for a philosophy of urbanism.

The question how are the cities influencing human's life will be answered in another
two chapters. Firstly will be stated the sentimentalistic theory of morality and secondy
will be explaned, how the city (urbanistic conception) is connected to one's moral
evaluation.

II. Are we slaves of our emotions?

The previous chapter opened a new empty-box, which has not been opened many times
before. It has been said, that the cities can influence morality. How is that possible?

By the sentimentalistic theory of morality, as well as by a few of other theories based on

emotions, to have moral judgment is to feel an emotional (sentimental) response in one's
body. The emotions are the core to understand morality. For Jesse Prinz, the morality is
culturally conditioned response. There is not one universally true morality, which can
serve as an objective measure for parallel moralities. All the moralities which appear in
the world are equal. In one sense are all equally right and in another sense are all
equally wrong. In the first case, different moralities are right if within those moralities
are moral judgments making with the reflection of emotions. For better and brighter
understnding, the very definition of Prinz's moral theory can be sumarized in these
words: "An action has the property of being morally wrong (right) just in case there is
an observer who has a sentiment of dissaprobation (approbation) toward it."12

9 The less developed regions comprise all regions of Africa, Asia (except Japan), Latin America and the Caribbean,
plus Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.
10 The more developed regions comprise Europe, North America, Australia/New Zealand, and Japan.
11 Gehl, Jan. Cities for People. Island Press, 2013, p. 9.
12 Prinz, Jesse. Emotional construction of morals. Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 9.
 It means that if one person has different moral values and judgments than another
person, it does not necessary implicate that one of them is not right. If those two persons
express their moral judgments according to their sentiments, the moral judgments are
true in the boolean way (they can be true or false). But this characteristic has an
opposite end. If there are two persons with two different (but both true) moral
judgments, it pushes morals into dead end. The main aim of ethics is to define one
universal and in all cases (or at least most of the cases) true system of values and
therefore moral judgments. For Prinz, this is not so big challenge to face. In his view, it
is not bad consequence. It is just the consequence of nature of reality with which we
have to count. His positive income into this problem is his solution of tolerance. No one
is right, so no one is better than the other. We have to tolerate and respect each other. Of
course it does not mean that you have to give up your morality or tolerate holocaust. It
only means you have to have all the time in your mind, that your truth is not an
objective one. Your morality is not supreme to others. How is the culture involved?

The culture is keeping its own morality through moral education in the early years. As
Prinz postulates, the major job with learning morality is done with triggering the
emotions. The means of inculcations are psychical punishment, withdrawal of love,
ostracization, deprivation and inducing vicarious distress.13

In Prinz's view the process of moral evaluation works as follows: "Emotional

conditioning and osmosis are not merely convenient tools for acquiring values: they are
essential. Parents sometimes try to reason with their children, but moral reasoning only
works by drawing attention to values that the child has already internalized through
emotional conditioning."14

Inputs mentioned above have their justification in telling the story of morality based on
emotions and the abundantly used practice of emotional triggering. Those findings tell
us about the nature of morality. In Prinz's view the morality is relative. One's morality
depends on the culture and/or emotional incentive.

Let's imagine a type of world in which one's emotions are triggered without he/she
being aware of it. To say it clear, in author's opinion this is the case of our world and it
opens the its doors for philosophy of urbanism.
13 See Prinz, Jesse. Morality is a Culturally Conditioned Response. Available on WWW:
https://philosophynow.org/issues/82/Morality_is_a_Culturally_Conditioned_Response.
14 Prinz, Jesse. Morality is a Culturally Conditioned Response. Available on WWW:
https://philosophynow.org/issues/82/Morality_is_a_Culturally_Conditioned_Response.
 The subject to examine is the influence of environment, in the case of urbanism city
environment. to one's emotions and therefore to his/her moral judgments. This
assumption can be resolved by using the researches in the field of psychology.

According to research held by Simone Schnall et al., there is a link between the
filthiness of the environment and moral judging. Schnall et al. designed four
experiments, which consisted of volunteers making their moral judgments in normal
conditions (not filthy), mild-stink conditions (four pieces of fart-spray was present close
to the participants) and in the strong-stink conditions (eight pieces of fart-spray was
present close to the participants). During the experiment there were different vignettes
portraying various kinds of moral violation given to the participants and the researches
were investigating, how would the moral judgments differ in the three conditions
mentioned above. The researches came up with so-called Private Body Consciousness
(PBC) index. This index was in advance describing how much are the participants able
to have attention to their physical states. Those participants with high PBC index had
bigger susceptibility to the changes in their body because of their sensitivity and another
internal skills.15

The result of this study is the fact telling us the participants with high PBC index made
more severe moral judgments when seated at a dirty desk than at a clean desk. 16 This
conclusion has its support in Prinz's work, in which he argues that people without
disposition to feel emotions are psychopaths. In their case the moral judgment is more a
matter of convention, not expressing their really own moral values.17

These foundings offer insight in how can be our moral judgments affected by external
factors like filthiness. Now imagine two different persons, person A and person B living
in two different cities with two different city environments. Let's say person A is living
in a clean city opened for people. Conversely the person B is living in a neglected city
without pro-human urbanistic strategy. They both have high PBC index, which means
they are inclinable for being affected by the environment. By analogy it can be
postulated, that the person A would have less severe moral evaluations than the person
B.

How the design of a city influence man's behaviour and way of life can be found in

15 See Schnall, Simone et al. Disgust as Embodied Moral Judgment. In: PSPB, Vol. 34 No. 8, 2008, p. 1096- 1102.
16 See Schnall, Simone et al. Disgust as Embodied Moral Judgment. In: PSPB, Vol. 34 No. 8, 2008, p. 1102.
17 Prinz, Jesse. Emotional construction of morals. Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 44.
Gehl's book mentioned above (Cities for People). This article doesn't have the ambition
to tell the whole story.

The question if we are slaves of our emotions is unanswerable in this article. At some
level we are, in some level we are not. For the use of philosophy of urbanism, it is way
more responsible to think we are.

Conclusion

Observations made above can sound tricky. It was argued that urbanism is an
overlooked field of interest in philosophy. After presenting the Prinz's moral theory and
Schnall's research it appears that persons are not fully-dependent on their own desires
for moral values, which they would prefer in normal conditions.

As was argued above, the influence of environment to our emotions and therefore moral
judgments seems to be set up. There are not many researches about this topic, that's why
the author dedicated the first chapter to arguing for a need of philosophy of urbanism,
which can go deeper to this rare topic.

If one accepts the presuposition that the philosophy should reflect all aspects of human
life, which can be analysed by using social sciences, there is no room left for being
sceptic about philosophy of urbanism. Better than analysing the results, philosophy
should analyses the causes. Rather than analysing the morality, why not to start with
analysing of city environment and its influence on the morality?
Sources:

Cohen, Barney. Urbanization in developing countries: Current trends, future

projections, and key challenges for sustainability. In: Technology in Society. Vol. 28,
20006. p. 63-80.

Curtis, William. Modern architecture since 1900. Phaidon Press, 1986.

Gehl, Jan. Cities for People. Island Press, 2013.

Gehl, Jan. Svarre, Birgitte. How to study public life. Island Press, 2013.

New Charter of Athens 2003. Available on WWW:

http://ectp-ceu.eu/index.php/en/component/content/article?id=85

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra. Paris, GF – Flammarion, 2006.

Prinz, Jesse. Emotional construction of morals. Oxford University Press, 2007.

Prinz, Jesse. Morality is a Culturally Conditioned Response. Available on WWW:

https://philosophynow.org/issues/82/Morality_is_a_Culturally_Conditioned_Response.

Schnall, Simone et al. Disgust as Embodied Moral Judgment. In: PSPB, Vol. 34 No. 8,
2008.

Zuppinger, Thibaud. Humanisme et urbanisme. In: L'habitat, un monde à l'échelle

humaine. 2009.