Abstract
In this volume, Robert Kirkman brings an ethical perspective to bear on urban and suburban environments. His central purpose is to support a deliberative framework for making productive decisions about land use, one that is ultimately geared towards supporting humans to flourish. In this regard, he focuses on a policy framework that is meant to encourage reflection on issues of character, motivation and consequence. Kirkman's case studies and other examples are drawn principally from the US context. Writing from within that context, he challenges several assumptions about land use in North America. For example, Kirkman questions the idea of judging green space in relation to a yardstick of wilderness. Such judgement, he argues, favours a rather misguided view of pristine nature which, in turn, understands environment as something amorphous, somehow existing apart from people, and destroyed as soon it is touched by human hands. In contrast, this monograph's framework seeks to encourage deliberation on issues arising at intertwined individual, social and ecological levels, helping moral projects that shape landscapes to support human flourishing better in an integral sense. Further, explicitly connecting ethics and politics, Kirkman suggests that applying this framework among both allies and opponents on specific issues of metropolitan growth would serve to clarify points of convergence and divergence in terms of interests, which can help avoid conflict arising from snap judgements and dialogue-ending positioning.
The Ethics of Metropolitan Growth manages to addresses a wide range of issues at the intersection of politics and space in an accessible manner. As such, it is easy to imagine motivated policy makers and higher-level undergraduates in the US reading through its pages over a couple of days and being rewarded with a good understanding of issues in play – some of which they may not have otherwise considered – when making decisions affecting the built environment. Additionally, in terms of cross-cultural comparison, the corresponding constituencies in places like the UK can interact with this volume to consider how their situation diverges from or is paralleled by Kirkman's US-themed content. This exercise can provide further insight into both the subject matter of metropolitan growth and the cultural specificity of ethics. In the classroom context, this volume may be helpful as its well-crafted prose often introduces relevant concepts in a nuanced manner that could serve as a basis for deeper discussion. In summary, proportionately to the effort required, reading The Ethics of Metropolitan Growth will represent time well spent.