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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.

What and where is ‘the asylum’ today? To what extent do mental healthcare facilities stand out as clearly bounded entities in the modern urban landscape, perhaps reflecting their history as deliberately set-apart and then often stigmatised places? To what extent have they maybe become less obtrusive, more sunk into and interacting with their urban surroundings? What issues of urban ethics are at stake: concerning who/what is starkly demarcated in the city, perhaps subjected to exclusionary logics and pressures, or more sensitively integrated into the city, planned for inclusion and co-dwelling? These questions underscore our article, rooted in an in-depth case study of Gartnavel Royal Hospital, Glasgow, opened as a ‘lunatic asylum’ on its present, originally greenfield, site in the 1840s and remaining open today surrounded by dense urban expansion. Building from the ‘voices’ of patients, staff and others familiar with the site, we discuss the sense of this asylum as ‘other’ to, as ‘outside’ of, or merely ’beside’ the urban fabric. Drawing from concepts of ‘orientations’ (Ahmed, 2006), sites as spatial constructions (Burns & Kahn, 2005), the power of borders and boundaries (Haselsberger, 2014; Sennett, 2018), issues of site, stigma and related urban ethical matters will be foregrounded. Where are the boundaries that divide the hospital campus from the urban context? What are the material signifiers, the cultural associations or the emotional attachments that continue to set the boundaries? Or, in practice, do boundaries melt into messier, overlapping, intersecting border zones, textured by diverse, sometimes contradictory, bordering practices? And, if so, what are the implications? open access GART-PSYSPAC: discourse, dwelling, doing

Les projets urbains – appelés aussi projets d’aménagement urbain ou opérations d’aménagement – sont largement tributaires de la participation accrue d’une multitude de parties prenantes, dont les atouts pour le projet et les revendications vis-à-vis de celui-ci peuvent être complémentaires et/ou contradictoires. Dans ce contexte quel degré de priorité accorder à telle ou telle partie prenante ? Pour y parvenir, les porteurs d’un projet sont appelés à évaluer la légitimité de ces parties prenantes. Afin d’examiner ce concept, l’étude fait appel au croisement de textes issus de corpus théoriques autres que les corpus classiques de l’urbanisme et des études urbaines : ceux de la théorie des stakeholders dans le domaine du management organisationnel et de l’éthique des affaires ; du modèle des cités, ancré dans la sociologie pragmatique ; et des théories de la justice. Puis elle confronte les enseignements de ces théories à l’analyse empirique d’un cas pratique virtuel, créé pour les besoins de cette recherche. L’aller-retour entre la théorie et des mises en situation concrètes, mettant souvent en avant des tensions entre légitimités concurrentes, permet d’affiner les principes éthiques à la base de ces légitimités, selon une méthode inspirée de celle de l’équilibre réflexif. L’analyse montre que la légitimité d’une partie prenante résulte d’un raisonnement s’appuyant sur une norme d’efficacité ou sur une norme éthique, idéalement compatibles dans le cadre d’une éthique de responsabilité. Dans la première approche (l’efficacité) le porteur du projet sera principalement attentif aux capacités d’action des parties prenantes sur le projet, incluant la capacité de représentativité, les capacités légales (titres, droits, liens contractuels), les savoirs et savoir-faire (expertise, compétences), la créativité, les ressources matérielles et financières, et la capacité à engager. Dans la deuxième approche (éthique) le porteur de projet sera principalement attentif aux revendications légitimes des parties prenantes vis-à-vis du projet : les revendications de bien-être global, de capabilités (autonomie, libertés, possibilités offertes aux individus, avantages socio-économiques), de liens communautaires (valeurs et traditions), de bien-être d’autrui et les revendications environnementales. La recherche permet alors de faire émerger six principes éthiques pour l’évaluation de la légitimité : l’utilité globale, le respect de la liberté, l’équité, la solidarité (et la tolérance), le care et la responsabilité environnementale. Alors que les théories de l’urbanisme – dont l’un des objets principaux est pourtant l’analyse critique des processus de fabrication des villes – se sont peu intéressées aux principes normatifs à la base de ces processus, cette recherche propose un cadre conceptuel utile aux chercheurs et aux professionnels pour porter un jugement, notamment en termes éthiques, sur les décisions relatives à la prise en compte des parties prenantes dans les projets urbains. En faisant cela, elle contribue à jeter les bases d’une éthique de la conduite des projets urbains., Urban projects - also referred to as urban development projects - are largely dependent on the increased involvement of a multitude of stakeholders, whose assets for, and demands on, the project may be complementary and / or contradictory. In this context, how much priority should be given to different stakeholders? To answer this question, project leaders are called upon to assess the legitimacy of these stakeholders. To examine this concept, the study calls upon the crossing of texts from theoretical corpuses other than the classic corpus of urban planning and urban studies: those of stakeholder theory in the field of organizational management and business ethics; the model of the « cités », anchored in pragmatic sociology; and theories of justice. Then it confronts the lessons of these theories with the empirical analysis of a virtual practical case created for the purpose of this research. The round-trip between theory and concrete situations, often emphasizing tensions between competing legitimacies, makes it possible to refine the ethical principles underlying these legitimacies, through a method inspired by that of reflexive equilibrium. The analysis shows that the legitimacy of a stakeholder results from reasoning based on an efficiency standard or on an ethical standard, ideally compatible in the context of an ethics of responsibility. In the first approach (effectiveness) the proponent will be mainly attentive to the stakeholders' capacities for action on the project, including representativeness, legal capacities (titles, rights, contractual links), knowledge and know-how (expertise, skills), creativity, material and financial resources, and the ability to engage other stakeholders into the project. In the second (ethical) approach, the project proponent will be mainly attentive to the legitimate demands of stakeholders on the project: demands for global well-being, capability building (autonomy, freedoms, opportunities for individuals, socio-economic benefits), community ties (values ​​and traditions of large and small communities), well-being of others and environmental claims. The research then enables the emergence of six ethical principles for the assessment of legitimacies: global utility, respect for freedom, equity, solidarity (and tolerance), care and environmental responsibility. While the theories of planning and urban studies - one of the main objects of which is the critical analysis of the manufacturing processes of cities - have paid little attention to the normative principles underlying these processes, this research proposes a conceptual framework that is useful for researchers and professionals to make a judgment, especially in terms of ethics, on decisions concerning the consideration of stakeholders in urban projects. In doing so, it helps to lay the foundations for an ethic of the conduct of urban projects.

The contribution originates from the project “habitation and habitation politics” in Munich, a subproject of the DFG research group “urban ethics”. Using the example of the Goldgrund art and activist network, it demonstrates how middle-class actors react to the tense real estate and rental market in Munich with different forms of protest. Among other things, Goldgrund designed fictitious real estate projects, was active against the privatization of public property and buildings and founded the social cooperative Bellevue di Monaco. The article analyzes this phenomenon at different levels. First, it focuses on the role of the middle class in such activist movements and asks what motivates its involvement. Then, the “subversive” practices of this form of protest are analyzed. Furthermore, it looks into the ethical arguments in this network which strongly emphasize good life in the city and empathic urbanism. Finally, these activist endeavors and the foundation of a social cooperative resulting from it can be interpreted as a form of “social creativity” in David Graeber’s sense, which contributes to the creation of new social forms and institutional arrangements., Ovaj je rad nastao u okvirima projekta “Stanovanje i politika stanovanja” u Münchenu, što je potprojekt istraživačke skupine DFG-a “Urbana etika”. Na temelju primjera mreže umjetnika i aktivista Goldgrund u radu se pokazuje kako dionici iz srednje klase reagiraju na napeto tržište nekretnina i iznajmljivača u Münchenu prosvjedujući na različite načine. Primjerice, Goldgrund je osmislio nepostojeće projekte razvoja nekretnina, igrao aktivnu ulogu u privatizaciji javnog vlasništva te je osnovao socijalnu zadrugu “Bellevue di Monaco”. U članku se njihova djelatnost analizira na različitim razinama. Rad započinje analizom uloge srednje klase u sličnim aktivističkim pokretima te se bavi pitanjem što motivira njihovo sudjelovanje. Zatim se analiziraju “subverzivne” prakse ove vrste protesta. Nadalje, u članku se raspravlja o etičkim argumentima koje mreža Goldgrund upotrebljava, a koji ističu dobar život u gradu i empatični urbanizam. Članak završava interpretacijom djelatnosti mreže kao i osnutka socijalne zadruge kao oblika “društvene kreativnosti” kako je definira David Graeber, a koja doprinosi stvaranju novih društvenih oblika i institucionalnih ustroja.