Built environment, ethics and everyday life

Abstract

In the wake of global crises concerning, for example, inequalities, migration, pandemics, and the environment, ethical concerns have come to the fore. In this thematic issue, we are especially interested in the role that the planning, design, and materialities of the built environment can take in relation to ethics, and we present four different openings or themes into urban ethics that we also think are worthy of further interrogation. First of all, we suggest that new ethics evolve around new materialities, i.e., urban development and new design solutions are always accompanied by new ethical issues that we need to tackle. Secondly, we highlight different aspects involved in the design and ethics of community building. Thirdly, we address the issue of sustainable planning by pointing to some its shortcomings, and especially the need to addressing ethical concerns in a more coherent way. Finally, we point to the need to further investigate communication, translation, and influence in participatory design processes. Taken together, we hope that this issue—by highlighting these themes in a series of different articles—can inspire further studies into the much needed field of investigation that is urban ethics.