FOR 2101:  Urban Ethics: Conflicts about the good and proper conduct of life in 20th and 21st century cities

• Subject Area: Humanities ; Geosciences
• Term: from 2015 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 240207984

The research group “Urban Ethics” pioneers a new approach in Urban Studies. In the first two years of the funded project, through six subprojects and two associated subprojects, the research group has been researching ethical conflicts and debates in cities and discussions and disputes over how one should live in the city – in the sense of the issue of what constitutes good and right urban living. In this way the group opens up urban ethical phenomenon as cultural subject matter and established a new analytical approach with related concepts.In the first phase we pursued the questions how far cities can be understood as spaces for ethical negotiation and contestation, which forms and functions concrete urban ethical projects take in the context of transformation processes, which ethical modes defuse urban ethical conflicts, under what conditions are they especially powerful, and with what other intensions and interests are they associated. Our analytical interest was in political (in the accepted sense) opportunities for and barriers to particular ethical projects and problem constellations.To these ends, and to promote coordination and collaboration in our interdisciplinary research, we formulated a common main question (How should one live in the city?), four perspectives (techniques of governance, social creativity, moral economy, and ethical subjects), and three sets of questions. While the results are of course subject related and dependent, they are also, in the sense of critical cultural and social science theory and theory building, methodologically and theoretically oriented. In order to “deepen” (in the sense of systematically making our concepts precise) the Urban Ethic research approach, we plan to both further realize the value of our existing perspectives and research questions, and open up new subjects and aspects. A new perspective, the investigation of the relations between ethical and political discussions of justice ideals, will play a more prominent role than in the first phase. In the second phase we will develop and consolidate (1) methodological innovation in Urban Ethical research. This will be complemented by (2) aiming to broaden the central fields and research issues of Urban Ethics that we think are especially relevant to our collective work on common perspectives and research questions.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• International Connection: Switzerland

Projects

• Charity. A praxeological approach to practices of help under urban conditions (Applicant Moser, Johannes )
• Coordination Funds (Applicant Moser, Johannes )
• Door into the future? Debates about the transformation of Porto Maravilha (Rio de Janeiro) (Applicant Prutsch, Ursula )
• Ethical Conjunctures, Globalised Environmental Discourses and the Quest for a Better City (Mexico City) (Applicant Dürr, Eveline )
• Habitation and Habitation Politics in Munich. Urban Ethics in the Context of Civic Involvement and Urban Governing (Applicant Moser, Johannes )
• Istanbul Heritage - Valuable and Dispensable. The Ethics of Urban Renewal and Heritage Protection, from 1910 to the Gezi Protests of 2013 (Applicant Neumann, Christoph K. )
• Prostitution in Tbilisi. Processes of Marginalization and Empowerment in Moral Discourses and Urban Practices in the 20th and Early 21st Century (Applicant Hausmann, Guido )
• The “Just City” and the Violence of Ethics in (Anti-Trump) Protests (New York City) (Applicant Ege, Moritz )
• Tokyo: On the Way to Becoming a Slow City? Strategies and Initiatives to Slow Down Urban Life Contexts (Applicant Schulz, Evelyn )
• Urban Environmental Ethics on the City Edge: Making Ethical Citizens for a ‘Blue Backyard’ (Auckland) (Applicant Winder, Gordon )
• Zentralprojekt (Applicant Moser, Johannes )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Johannes Moser