Inaugural Issue: Philosophies of the City
Creators: name: Lehtinen, Sanna
name: Wittingslow, Ryan
name: Counihan, Marian
name: Lobo, Tea
name: Stone, Taylor
Publisher: name: ETH Zurich
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: info:eu-repo/classification/ddc/100
subject: Philosophy
subject: FOS: Philosophy, ethics and religion

description: This issue opens with five contributions that deal, in different ways, with foundational questions about how we should approach the cities and their relationship with philosophy. In the first paper, “Knowing the City”, Anna Bloom-Christen argues that walking is the best way to get to know the city; it is an activity that produces both participatory and procedural knowledge of urban places. In his article, “Philosophy of the City and Transdisciplinary Possibilities”, Shane Epting explores the possibility of using philosophy of the city in transdisciplinary research, policy, and educational contexts. Johannes Mueller-Salo, in his “Three Ways of Doing Philosophy of the City”, offers an account of some of the ways in which philosophers can analyse cities: via urban epistemology, urban normative theory, or applied philosophy of the city. In their “How to Know a City: The Epistemic Value of City Tours” Pilar Lopez-Cantero and Catherine M. Robb give an account of how city tours constitute a valuable epistemological tool for grasping a city. Finally, Alfred Nordmann’s “Lost in the City: Lessons in Coordination” argues that learning a city is much like learning a language: they both begin with a distinct form of illiteracy.

The next five contributions take a more applied approach to the philosophical problems posed by cities. Robert Rosenberger’s “A Classification Scheme for Hostile Design” sharpens the notion of hostile design as a critical tool and outlines a typology to classify hostile design objects in public space. Gentrification as a political problem is a central topic in Karen Adkins’ article “Carving Up Community”. According to her, gentrification endangers democratic processes through how it affects the use and formation of public space. Samantha Noll and Tuhina Bhar’s “The Five Pillars of Urban Environmental Justice: A Framework for Building Equitable Cities” investigates the central topic of urban justice through the potential social impacts of community changes. Noll and Bhardraw from environmental ethics to carve a framework for more equitable land-use change. With their contribution “Green Areas: How to Avoid the Tragedy of the Commons” Valeria Martino and Gian Vito Zani address various dichotomies around city thinking through the example of greenspaces in cities. As Martino and Zani show, these dichotomies have significant implications for the quality of life and sustainability of cities. Finally, David Flood’s paper bridges urban aesthetics and postphenomenological philosophy of technology in his article “#kalasatama: Discursive Views of the Helsinki Landscape Through the Virtual Window”. In this paper, the new Kalasatama neigh-bourhood in Helsinki is taken as a case of how urban places are presented in, and mediated through, social media.

The issue concludes with two non-peer-reviewed ‘irregulars’. In the first, “The Ethics of Mapping Slums—And How AI Complicates the Picture”, Tea Lobo, Isaac Oluoch, and Michael Nagenborg discuss how the use of AI will change the processes of mapping low-income areas in cities. This interview is then followed by an artist’s statement by the cover artist for this issue: the Canadian photographer Jesse Colin Jackson. In this account Jackson describes his interest in the apartment building Mackenzie Place and its role in the urban landscape.
description: Philosophy of the City Journal, 1 (1)
description: ISSN:2378-1017