Abstract

FRICKE, Martin Francisco. Environmental ethics for the city. Sig. Fil [online]. 2021, vol.23, n.46, pp.120-149.  Epub Apr 04, 2022. ISSN 1665-1324.

What does environmental ethics have to say about the urban context? Is the city an environment that has only negative value or is it possible, and in fact necessary, to develop ethical recommendations about how to design it? In this paper, I argue for the second of these disjuncts and sketch some ideas for an environmental city ethics. I try to show that the most important principle of such an ethics is procedural: anyone affected by a decision about the urban environment must have the possibility to participate in the process of making it. This principle has certain preconditions and there are also limitations on its applicability. For example, it is plausible that there are certain ecocentric ethical obligations, which are valid independently of the implementation of the principle. I sketch an idea for how a city’s green areas can help to raise citizens’ awareness of these obligations.

Keywords : procedural principle; deliberative democracy; environmental education; green areas; ecocentric ethics.

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