Perspectivisations

Given that the impulses for urban ethics come from various directions, in all sub-projects we examine the contentious interplay of three forms of engaging with urban life, which take place in or around ethical discourses and in everyday practices:

•  the establishment of models of "good" and "proper" conduct of life in the city through different actors and institutions
• informal, "lived" urban ethics, which are articulated in culturally and situationally specific (emic) ways through the language of the protagonists
• conflicts and negotiation processes

To investigate this interplay, the following theoretical perspectivisations of urban ethics are used:

Urban Ethics and Social Creativity

From this angle, we focus on practices, debates and lived urban ethics where actors generate (new) models of urban coexistence and urban life, or even reinvent it as a new urban art of living. Social creativity is most obviously seen in countercultures and alternative milieus, in protests and artistic practices, among experts in urbanism, but also takes place in the private sphere in related grassroots movements and everyday struggles that challenge rules that are usually taken for granted.

Urban Ethics and Moral Economies

Moral economies here denote the ideas of urban actors who seek to appeal to traditional moral boundaries to protect their interests - and hope for support from "above". These negotiation processes can slip into a legal vacuum or into competition with the law. Therein lies a critical potentiality of urban ethics, for example with regard to disputes over the use of resources such as water, or, in urban development, to affordable housing. From such negotiation processes, in many cases protagonists derive a sense of customary rights - this, too, can be seen as moral economies.

Urban Ethics and Techniques of Governing

Urban ethical models and processes of conflict resolution can simultaneously be intertwined with techniques of governance, which often create an impression of voluntary action and consensus-seeking. These should not be understood as a direct exercise of repressive rule. Rather, in the framework of ethical discourses and in spaces created for these purposes, urban dwellers are guided and encouraged to guide themselves as self-reliant and responsible subjects. Ethical projects often result from coalitions of state institutions and civil society groups, as can be seen, for example, environmental campaigns. Social creativity "from below" in turn may also give rise to new institutions , new forms of self-management and subjectification that can be considered self-governance, and at the same time create new exclusions.

Urban Ethics and their Subjects

Discourses about the good and proper conduct of life require and create appropriate subject positions, which must be performed in order to be accepted as a participant in ethical debates. From this perspective, the research group focuses the techniques that enable people to become "ethical" and “urban” subjects. Through urban ethics, cultural models of "good" and “proper” behavior or even ways of being are developed, such as the exemplary urban dweller and green citizen, the responsible member of civil society, the self-sacrificing subject, the creative citizen and entrepreneur. This also produces depictions of urban ethical failure – contrary images of bad, improper, irresponsible city life.