This book will benefit readers by revealing how urban existence is a multifaceted affair that, once examined, will forever change the way they think about their place in the city and what it means to live in one.Engaging in urban existentialism requires interrogating the idea of “The City,” delving into the facets of its conception. The lights, sounds, exquisite buildings, art, culture, and, most importantly, the endless possibilities entice people. They are where your wildest drea...

This book fleshes out the idea that everything about the city involves a fight for the good life. From how we conceptualize it to its streets and the fiber-optic cables beneath them, nothing is excluded from creating the cities we want to call home.In turn, this book continues Shane Epting’s ideas developed in Urban Enlightenment and Meaning in the Metropolis. It begins with an examination of how scholars define the term “city.” He argues that while cities are oft...

This book applies the concept of moral ordering to urban affairs. It demonstrates how multi-stakeholder engagement can enhance the quality of city life while supporting ambitions such as ethical urban sustainability and human flourishing.While there is a history of philosophers viewing cities as technologies, cities’ encompassing nature inherently limits them. Urban sustainability matters often affect marginalized and vulnerable people, the public, nonhuman species, future generati...

This book offers an original perspective on food supply chains. It argues that the ability to trade food on a global scale could be intrinsically good aside from any instrumental value that people gain from it.While the author’s argument seems to counter wholesale anti-agribusiness views, it is consistent with the larger goals of food-justice movements. The author examines the structures of food supply chains, revealing the kinds of harm they help produce. They include sla...

Cities’ transportation systems affect people, nonhuman life, urban artifacts, and could impact future generations, increasing tensions through what appear to be conflicting interests at times. Ethically addressing these concerns requires dealing with the problem of moral prioritization. Shane Epting illustrates how “moral ordering” benefits this issue. Examining these matters provides conceptual advantages for thinking through the ethical dimensions of urban mobility in an everchanging wor...

This book makes the case that several urban technologies contribute to wicked problems such as climate change and vast social and economic inequalities. Such situations often create unfavorable conditions for mental life in cities. These conditions force us to expand the taxonomy of technology to include new designations: “wicked” and “saving” technologies. Epting holds that the latter can support worthwhile goals such as socially just urban sustainability. Along with fleshing out this vie...

The developed world, increasingly aware of inconvenient truths” about global warming and sustainability, is turning its attention to possible remedies-eco-efficiency, sustainable development, and corporate social responsibility, among others. But such measures are mere Band-Aids, and they may actually do more harm than good, says John Ehrenfeld, a pioneer in the field of industrial ecology. In this deeply considered book, Ehrenfeld challenges conventi...

Flourishing: A Frank Conversation about Sustainability invites you into a conversation between a teacher, John R. Ehrenfeld, and his former student now professor, Andrew J. Hoffman, as they discuss how to create a sustainable world. Unlike virtually all other books about sustainability, this one goes beyond the typical stories that we tell ourselves about repairing the environmental damages of human progress.Through their dialogue and essays that open each section, the aut...

In a world facing multiple crises, our foundational institutions are failing to offer effective solutions. Drawing on the emerging consilience of knowledge, Michael Pirson debunks the fundamental yet outdated assumptions of human nature that guide twentieth-century management theory and practice - as captured in the 'economistic' paradigm - and instead provides an urgently needed conceptual and practical 'humanistic' framework, based on the protection of human dignity and the promotion of ...

Consumption research is burgeoning across a wide range of disciplines. The Routledge Handbook on Consumption gathers experts from around the world to provide a nuanced overview of the latest scholarship in this expanding field. At once ambitious and timely, the volume provides an ideal map for those looking to position their work, find new analytic insights and identify research gaps. With an intuitive thematic structure and resolutely international outlook, it engages with theory...

In Crippling Epistemologies and Governance Failures, Gilles Paquet criticizes the prevailing practices of the social sciences on the basis of their inadequate concepts of knowledge, evidence and inquiry, concepts he claims have become methodological “mental prisons”. Paquet describes the prevailing policy development process in Canada in terms of its weak information infrastructure, poor accountability, and inflexible organization design. In contrast, he suggests that social scien...

What exactly is 'small change'?Build a bus stop in an urban slum and a vibrant community sprouts and grows around it - that is the power of small changes that have huge positive effects.This book is an argument for the wisdom of the street, the ingenuity of the improvisers and the long-term, large-scale effectiveness of immediate, small-scale actions. Written by Nabeel Hamdi, the guru of urban participatory development and the master of the art, Small Change brings over thr...