''Cities, Real and Ideal: Categories for an Urban Ontology''

283 Pages·2011·2.384 MB·English

by  Weissman, David

In memory of John N. Findlay
David Weissman
Cities, Real and Ideal
Categories for an Urban Ontology
C A T E G O R I E S

Edited by

Roberto Poli (Trento)

Advisory Board

John Bell (London, CA)
Mark Bickhard (Lehigh)
Heinrich Herre (Leipzig)
David Weissman (New York)

Volume 2
David Weissman

Cities, Real and Ideal

Categories for an Urban Ontology
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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Bradley Horn for this book’s illustrations, and to my wife,
Katherine, for her patience and help.

The book is dedicated to my former teacher. This is not a book he would
have written, but I couldn’t have written it without him.

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………. 7
Chapter One: Theories of social structure……......…. 19
1. Systems………………………………………..……… 19
2. Individuals………………..…………………………… 30
Chapter Two: Systems, individuals, and the whole.… 35
1. Systems………………………………………………… 35
2. Individuals…………………………………………….. 45
3. Regulating the array of individuals, systems, and
networks………………………………………….. 51
4. Qualifications and details……….…………………….. 58
5. Anomalous perspectives………….…………………… 63
Chapter Three: Motivation…………………………….. 65
1. Motivational structure…………………………………. 67
2. Inspection or inference………………………………… 67
3. Function/structure……………………………………… 68
4. Animators……………………………………………… 70
5. Character………………………………………………. 70
6. Deliberation……………………………………………. 72
7. Education………………………………………………. 73
8. Goals, volitions, and rewards……………………..…... 74
9. A useful metaphor………..…………………………… 76
10. Systems and the whole………..……………………… 78
Chapter Four: Circumstances………….……………… 81
1. Climate and site………………………..……………… 81
2. History…………………………………………………. 82
3. Culture……………………………………..………….. 83
4. Technology…………………………………….……… 84
5. Government…………………………………………… 86
6. Economy……………………………………………… 101
7. A determinable and its determining conditions………. 111
Chapter Five: Values…………………………………… 113
1. A taxonomy…………………………………………… 113
2. Historical referents……………………………………. 116
3. The three variables……………………………………. 118
4. Balance………………………………………………. 127
5. Spiritual and aesthetic values……………………………. 133
6. The real and ideal………………………………………… 134
Chapter Six: Social Process……………………………… 137
1. Systems and networks………………………………….. 139
2. Individuals………………………………..…………. 142
3. Corporate self-regulation……………………………… 145
4. Evolution/ revolution……………………………………. 158
5. Process at three speeds………………………………….. 160
Chapter Seven: City form…………………………..……… 167
1. Carrying capacity………………………………………… 168
2. Boundaries……………………………………………….. 170
3. Infrastructure…………………………………………….. 170
4. Bulk and pace……………………………………………. 172
5. Networks and stratification………………………………. 174
6. Centrifugal or centripetal forces….……………………… 175
7. Attractor states…………………………………………… 180
8. Beauty……………………………………………………. 187
9. Idealization and control………………………………….. 189
Chapter Eight: City Life………………………………….. 191
1. Intensity……………………………………………………. 191
2. Diversity…………………………………………………. 194
3. Character…………………………………………………. 197
4. Morality, cooperation, and trust…………………………. 201
5. Work, money, and wealth……………………………….. 203
6. Communities displaced by networks……………………. 206
7. Power, conflict, and violence……………………………. 208
8. Significance that unifies or divides……………………… 213
9. Variations………………………………………………… 214
10. Evaluation………………………………………………. 220
Chapter Nine: Measures of city health…………………….. 221
1. Essential social values…………………………………… 221
2. Managerial tasks…………………………………………. 222
3. Material conditions………………………………………. 227
4. Humane values…………………………………………… 228
5. Profiles…………………………………………………… 252
6. Connection or exclusion……………………….…………. 256
7. Justice as balance and inclusion……………… ..………… 260
Introduction

Cities are conspicuous among settlements because of their profiles:
bridges, streets, or skyline: Venice, Paris, or New York. Every city joins
stability to flux in ways peculiar to itself, though each resembles others
because the elements of social structure are common to all. Each city is a
web of social relations, a clamorous machine of systems and networks; none
is merely an aggregate of people going their separate ways. No one doubts
the reality of individuals or the whole: every significant social or political
philosophy exalts individual freedom while acknowledging the possibility
for conflict, hence the need for an authority that mitigates complexity and
conflict. Many sociologists but few modern philosophers argue, as I do, that
systems, not bare individuals, are a settlement’s principal agents and
substance. There are no systems without members, yet core systems—
families, businesses, schools, and churches—do a society’s work while
supplying contexts for personal development and initiatives that express
individual character and talent. Discount systems while emphasizing
freedom and you ignore the contexts where people live, work, and dream.
Discount networks of overlapping systems—each defended against all or
some others—and you fail to see barriers that divide and stratify societies.
These features are common to settlements of every size, though cities
express them in distinctive ways: orchestras play music too elaborate for a
quartet; city densities promote collaborations unachievable in simpler
towns.
My account of cities emphasizes ten points:
i. Every human settlement is a complex of individuals, systems, and a
public regulator.

ii. Systems are created by the reciprocal causal relations of their
members (pitcher and catcher, friends conversing). Some systems are
mutually independent. Others are organized hierarchically (marriages
regulated by the state); they overlap (the Port Authority of New York
and New Jersey); or they form networks because of common or
complementary interests (businesses, their suppliers, and clients).

iii. Many urban social structures and processes are organized