Despite the threat of Cold War nuclear annihilation, the older generation of advanced societies grew up believing in ‘progress.’ Given neoliberal positivity, they eschewed desperation and had to admit that ‘things were getting better all the time.’1 So much was also the hope of those in developing lands. Surely, then, the emergence of grace in an urban milieu should not foreshadow socioeconomic decline? Nor, unless one could find virtue in secular asceticism, should it presage a loss of welfare. Yet, to enable other progressive outcomes, the proposal to maintain a high-wage urban economy will clearly entail difficulties.2 What sort of an agenda might conclude the present project?
Conspectus
the style of discourse can no longer be demonstration, as from empirical data to true conclusions. Rather it must be dialogue, recognizing uncertainty, value-commitments, and plurality of legitimate perspectives. These are the basis for post-normal science.
Sardar and Abrams suggest a ‘feral’ element to nature, impervious to humanity’s endeavors to create a technosphere (Daly 1977, 177). These attempts are neither innocent nor vicarious: they are wholly intentional and, at least since the Industrial Revolution, have been justified on a reward-to-effort basis. Currently, despite the patronizing counter-claims by the global caste of beneficiaries, we find ourselves inviting chaos as more of our practices and programs promote setbacks and unintended, or worse, unimagined, ‘black swan’ consequences (cf. Taleb 2010; Gleeson 2010, 2014). People nevertheless have access to, and can act upon, the IPAT identity to improve their collective lot, as have certain economies in the last 50 years. To achieve more sustainable outcomes, not just reflecting rhetoric but directed toward species survival, there must exist responsibility and a collective will, directed both effectively and efficiently (McFague 2008, 21; Huebsch 2009, 37–41; Gore 2013, xxxi). Easier said than done: regarding cities, what can be drawn from the present exercise, which claims a very high level of systemic resolution and alleges that grace exists above goodness and greatness?
The City of Grace offers a salutary model of urban development, combining a defensible vision with a manageable focus. Unlike other urban theorization, it recognizes from the outset the prospect of systemic failure and the lure of chaos. It maintains that learned helplessness, flaccidness or encroaching high entropy can be challenged and argues the application in human affairs of rationality—a remarkable idea today. The script is radical both in advocating a less crowded world living within its resource capabilities and in outlining the emergence of a settlement which seeks to stabilize its domestic population. It asserts that municipal function and form should complement each other and that adoption of precepts and strategies must integrate the two facets. As Daujat (1959, 11) remarked, beauty alone cannot bestow grace; likewise, despite sustained green urbanist efforts such as those of Steffen Lehmann (2010), altering form alone cannot solve the problems of contemporary urbanism. It has proven incapable of addressing functional shortcomings in transport congestion and encompassing density, and is now falling short in the infrastructure and resource arenas, as in water and power supply. Planners and other scholars who, in a partial approach, pin their hopes on form will be disappointed and mislead their audiences, as will those who would adjust existing socio-technological landscapes (e.g. justice, ‘climate adaptation’) without addressing fundamental social drivers.
Altering form alone cannot solve the problems of contemporary urbanism
Points of Reference
Function is overwhelming form in many cities. Despite self-serving denial (aka spin, dreaming and stardust), the overarching perversity, eclipsing even symptomatic climate change, is population expansion, insouciantly probing the limits to growth (Georgescu-Roegen 1980, 49). It is that which cannot be mentioned in debate or reports, too politically incorrect, too hot to handle. Yet, in the long run, a species which cannot environmentally regulate its own population dynamics is renouncing its vaunted ‘free will’ and is no more advanced than the ‘lesser’ animals it devours to sustain itself. Despite the existence now of diet-specific estimates of the earth’s ‘carrying capacity’ (Cohen 1995), few seem to know or care whether demographic destiny will be positive or negative. Yet, globally, there is every chance that it will, in desperation, blindside the IPAT identity. We need to recognize how, in a TINA compact, national(istic) ethoses of growth have infused and beguiled our lives at many levels. As Susan Fainstein (2010) writes on the very first page of The Just City, ‘increasingly, urban régimes have focused on economic growth as their objective, essentially claiming that growth-promoting policies result in the greatest good for the greatest number.’ Political élites, in what has become an unthinking manta, have linked economic growth to population gains, seemingly over-influenced within national accounting by final demand and household consumption in the expenditure approach to gross domestic product.
The overarching perversity is population expansion.
Hamilton’s (2003) Growth Fetish and Gore’s (2013) The Future pick up many economic, but fewer demographic, manifestations. The dimensions of ‘growth’ have been detailed by Teune (1988), but its origins merit further reflection. Does it represent psychoanalytic regression, mimicking children who value their natural growth in endowing them with greater capacity en route to adulthood? Why do people not celebrate the end of their physical growth, given the human-scale spaces they will inhabit? By analogy, why cannot we all regard relentless anthropogenic colonization of a finite earth as irrational or aberrant? Just as Daly (1977, 99) criticizes ‘growthmania,’ the Dutch economist, Goudzwaard (1979), has acknowledged an ‘idolization of progress’ infusing modern ideologies such as liberalism, Marxism, socialism and nationalism. The legitimizing emphasis on technological materiality excludes other actualizing aspects of human existence (Gay 1991, 77; Wilber 2001, 224–25). In many jurisdictions, ongoing demographic increase requires economic growth to avoid inhabitants becoming poorer per caput.3 Otherwise, growth might represent a substitute secular faith to offset falling religiosity (cf. Kjellberg 2000, 27) or shield us from mortal decline and death. Possible interpretations, however, do not make this pathology any more gracious, or conducive to long-term species survival (Hamilton 2010).
As economism outguns sociality, today’s TINA world seems far from capturing Edmund Burke’s ‘delight,’ still less the ‘sublime.’ Yet, having analyzed system dynamics, environmental phase shifts, turbulence and chaos, the present book, via the generative potential of ‘grace’ as no longer a latent but a living metaphor, argues a somewhat brighter (but possibly vainglorious4) alternative to Eberle’s (1994) postmodern anomie. Involving expiation and holistic revival around positive aspirations and mental well-being, it underlines Gleeson’s (2010) emphasis on restraint, sacrifice and solidarity. It also relates to consciousness of the environment (Dreyer 1990, 239), prevailing utility, and participation in a comprehensible socioeconomic milieu which conserves natural and physical, and advances human and social, capital. In this way, it fulfills the first (and probably much of the second) of Cohen’s (1989) welfare criteria.
Expiation and holistic revival around positive aspirations and mental well-being
The City should simultaneously exhibit Adam Smith’s idea of beauty in advancing a goal-oriented, effective and efficient package. Surely there is nothing wrong with a clear purpose backed by industriousness? Given the necessary and sufficient conditions behind urban grace, explored here for the first time, people could ascend the hierarchy of needs to access Schopenhauer’s concept of ‘freedom’ within which desirable personal characteristics materialize (Holt 2007). Ever since the early writings of Kurt Goldstein (1939), humanistic psychologists have understood the importance of ongoing motivation and fulfillment of potential. Connoting both material and relational wealth, Maslow (1987, 105) called the good society one which so organizes its institutions as to ‘give its members the greatest possibility of becoming sound and self-actualizing human beings.’ That condition is associated with spontaneity, a lack of prejudice and an embrace of facts and reality. The actualized are autonomous and enjoy Diwan’s (2000) relational wealth. They are likely to overcome shock and stress, exhibit interpersonal and collective trust, enjoy good mental health and exercise a positive influence on others. Theirs is a collaborative and civil society, surrounded by moral capital (Haidt 2012, 292) and experiencing the prospect of long-term survival as opposed to a corrosive uncertainty. As in Maslow’s (1987, 121) psychological utopia which he called Eupsychia, many people will have ethical or religious interests, which need not create social incompatibilities if pursued considerately (Putnam and Campbell 2010, 520). This situation suggests that Platonic beauty might revolve more around function than form in The City of Grace.
Actualized people enjoy autonomy and relational wealth.
These psychological attributes are equally endorsed in Ryan and Deci’s (2017) self-determination theory which regards the innate needs of competence, autonomy and relatedness as the foundations of welfare. It reaches beyond the ‘carrot and stick’ of extrinsic stimuli to argue for energy, direction, persistence and equifinality as products of intention and activation. People need opportunities to make real and meaningful contributions, ones which create individual and community self-determination and intrinsic motivation. If location could affect their lives, what type could help? Our empirical search for urban grace on earth faltered, and limited success could reward Weiner’s (2008) pursuit of ‘bliss.’ Recalling Hans Westerman’s ideal of inspired and people-sensitive choice (Freestone 1993), and channeling Simone Weil, a better first move for interested parties would be stand back, take time out, and simply conceive remission from current negative urban externalities, and the diseconomies, dis-utilities and distractions which can thwart worthwhile objectives (Harvey 2000, 257–58; Wadley 2008, 651–52). The second could be to seek companions looking for personal and group fulfillment. As in Reformation theology, the third is to find the place and faith (in humanity) to make a stand. Connah (1998, 14) opines that grace ‘is a word sorely in need of revisiting.’ Given problems with still-comfortable alternatives and accepting the inevitable trade-offs, the world might yet find 400,000 individuals prepared to take the necessary steps—perhaps people of the ‘sane, humane and ecological’ orientation applauded by Robertson (1979, 120–22).
Remission from urban negative externalities, and diseconomies, dis-utilities and distractions
Forty years ago, Banfield (1970, 35) wrote that ‘at some future time—a very distant one perhaps—the logic of metropolitan growth will have to change ‘lest eventually the supply of vacant land run out.’ Today that singular logic needs embellishment for more pressing reasons. Linking demographic stability, innovation and continued productivity, the search for grace represents a reaction against the coercive strictures of ebullient demography and neoliberal capitalism. It recasts conventional or monocular urban geography around a little-explored, elevated and challenging concept. Pursued across human means and ends in disciplines from architecture to theology, grace teases with sidetracks and detail, and questions sacred secular nostrums. Far less totalizing than the TINA edict (Gray 1998), the case does not conscript but targets volunteers, leaving existing situations for gainsayers. Capitalism has clearly spread out spatially but the choices it offers, now to some 230 nations and dependencies, reside in the material, and often amount to small variations on a theme. In a post-Foucauldian thesis, Dufour (2008, 157) argues that neoliberalism is deinstitutionalizing and de-symbolizing society to ensure that future epistemology rises no higher than the level of the market (cf. Wadley 2008, 671–72). As Maslovian horizons thereby fade and the opportunity for conceptual transcendence recedes, the timespan to propose contrarian courses could be shrinking (cf. Doucet 2007; Hitchens 2018).
In neoliberalism, epistemology rises no higher than the level of the market.
The current project adheres more strongly to scientific method, especially in deductive conceptualization, than most foregoing urban modeling. It has adopted the psychological, organizational and systematic advantages of theory-building identified by Haggett and Chorley (1967). With sound foundations established, the necessary conditions for urban grace were located first in communal precepts of rationality, triple bottom line sustainability, and low entropy, each to be overlooked with peril in potentially chaotic future urbanization. An adjunct lies in individual utility, tailored to post-materialist ends which accentuate relational well-being to provide some meaning as opposed to mere metrics in life (Nelson 2006, 30; Russell 2011, 221–22). Several strategies—health, wealth, innovation, altruism, stewardship and moderation—were found sufficient to foster secular grace. Thereafter, a simple expositional structure operationalized graciousness and gracefulness, respectively, in the economics, politics and sociology of urban function, and in the architecture, civic decorum and strategic and structure planning associated with urban form. In the end, the resultant construction is no kallipolis, Plato’s haunt of the philosopher-kings. Despite its unusual focus, the process and outcome of The City of Grace are contemporary, pragmatic and achievable within the policy-analytic settings exemplified in the work of John Friedmann. The project criticizes but still necessarily involves capitalism as a systemic framework (cf. Short 1989, 133; Giddens 2003, 9) and raises the natural environment to a position it will probably have to attain anyway by 2050, should species survival be of passing interest. Indeed, if efforts were made, meaningfully involving moderation and stewardship, to alter the global trajectory, people would also be changed in their interactions and new connections. In this way, grace would come to exert a form of relational agency.
Just as cogent as environmental problems are socioeconomic ones, in that the contemporary model of globalization (for that is all it is) (cf. Novak 1982, 240; Hamilton, 2003, 13; Kaletsky 2010, 184–85) champions ideological but unproven paradigms without fallback positions. Right now, there appears no Plan B, and flexibility and transience are lauded (Toffler 1970). Apart from material gain, the ends of urban existence blur as people spend more time countering uncontrollable forces. Those wearied by quiet desperation might seek a sea or tree change, a downshift, a slowdown or access to a private community. Notwithstanding the postmodern retreat of the meta-narrative (Lipovetsky and Charles 2005, 36), others still validate wide-angle academic models. These paradigms have often relied on entrenched ideologies, such that the means (e.g. progressivism and neo-Marxism) can overshadow the end which once, presumably, had something to do with utility or equity. Deontology thus trumps consequentialism. A few realists and pragmatists, like Herman Daly, Peter Victor, Richard Heinberg, Samuel Alexander and Brendan Gleeson eschew the intellectual straightjacket to propose radical and realistic macro-analyses which might just work out, were humanity prepared to reduce its impact on the sole planet presently inclined to support it. The antithesis of superbia, their work provides a new dimension to grace: namely, on the edge of chaos, it becomes a concept conducive to, and reliant upon, human survival which, in turn, depends on the global exercise of rationality. This collective interpretation has been grounded in the strict universalist criteria proposed by O’Grady (2002). The logic indicates that attributing substantive foci to, and relying upon, the so-called rational choice model in economics is once more problematic, since it is imprisoned not only by over-determinism but also by assumptions regarding the multidimensional and, eventually, relativist concept of utility (Frederiks et al. 2015, 1386). For his part, Kaletsky (2010, 186) greatly extends this heterodox observation in that ‘the academic economics of the past twenty years have been comparable to pre-Copernican astronomy….’
The so-called rational choice model in economics again falters.
Objections
Though Peter Sale’s (2011) warns about ‘our dying planet,’ it would be supremely hubristic and ironical to advance the model of The City of Grace as a TINA proposition. Certain objections can be anticipated.5 Customarily, and since there is nothing to lose, dissenters will raise charges of élitism. In that their substantive case might dispute a quest for wealth, it can be handled differentially by suggesting that élitism would pertain should academicians study poverty, yet fail in systems terms to analyze the high entropy which produces it. On the other hand, the objection could be acknowledged at a process level, since it is an uncommon privilege to peer beyond ‘desperation’ to alternatives at the edge of global socioeconomic chaos.6 As to the product, the City proposes exclusivity and moderation precisely to avoid dystopian disarray which, of course, remains available for those who prefer it. Today, generating contingency plans is more conceptually demanding than denouncing ideas for purely tribal, ideological or habitual reasons. Almost by definition, ideologues are followers, not leaders, of original thinking.
Ideologues are followers, not leaders, of original thinking
Critics would do better to pursue Haggett and Chorley’s (1967) lead and test the model for technical flaws. Any weakness lies not in its political and social props, nor a lack of 400,000 recruits for the first of, prospectively, a set of intentional communities. For creative settings, ‘smart cities’ and developed nations, the flaws lie primarily in the precarity inevitable in startups and technological transformation. As a covert aspect thereof, pirating of brand and proprietary techniques will clearly threaten the City. If these practices are not expunged by effective multilateral enforcement, never-ending industrial espionage and defense will prevail at firm and national level. Some today claim that we have actually commenced the Third World War—in cyberspace. As products and services increasingly represent brain before brawn, Gore (2013, 75) comments that ‘value continues to migrate online.’ In extenso, IP theft challenges global enterprise and economic development as we have known it since 1750. It matters not whether one is a capitalist or a socialist: barring some paradigmatic change (Rifkin n.d.), why risk pursuing technological advance if breakthroughs are simply spirited away?
Pirating of brand and proprietary techniques will clearly threaten the City
While there could obviously be other approaches from the one chosen in this project to address looming issues in global urbanization, they could require adherents to: ignore Adam Smith’s parable of the poor man’s son; join the sunny throng of writers unfussed about population issues (though pilloried by the contrarians O’Connor and Lines 2008); sing the uncertain paeans of neoliberalism and its garland of expanding global cities (cf. Glaeser 2011); or, in an allegedly TINA neoliberal world, pose other drivers for urbanism, arguably more radical, progressive or facilitative than those forwarded here (cf. Harvey 2000, 164, 257–81). They could be scenario-based, or propose alternative avenues for future research. Yet, despite calls for the humane, just, creative, or green city, along with variations offered by Hubbard (2006) and the warnings of Barry Schwartz (2005), there is little chance in a convergent milieu of being overwhelmed by alternatives. If anything, real choice could recede as oligopolies tighten, mergers and acquisitions continue, production scale and barriers to entry rise, technologies are standardized, procedures and protocols are globalized,7 and languages wither. These eventualities are hardly what planners Leonie Sandercock (2003, 405) or Hans Westerman conjured in a ‘spirited’ city, or one of hope (Freestone 1993, 2, 12). Nor is there much appreciation of whether the urban ‘edge of chaos’ is abrupt, with definable triggers or phase shifts, or a slippery slope down which movement is almost imperceptible but retreat impossible (Vercelli 1998). The latter, ‘boiled frog’ variant, relying upon collective complacency and ignorance, is the more insidious (‘all our own work’).
Is the urban ‘edge of chaos’ abrupt, or a slippery slope?
Prospectus
So, what of grace itself? Various theologians have blended their deep scholarship with observation of, and practical means to address, urban and environmental conditions.8 Their thoughts are not addressed to the Ship of Fools. Rather, for believers, they offer ideas to access divine grace, to the extent that it can be. For mortals, more deontologically inclined toward Daly’s (1977, 19) spectrum of disciplines, there remains the chance of secular bestowal of grace founded upon realism about anthropogenic limitations. Its emergence would likely depend on self-help, as in the dawning upon humanity of the virtue of philosophical rationality, which could be applied to stewardship of our blue planet. Here, then, is a manifesto, to supplement those of Harvey (2000), Gleeson (2006) and Gore (2013, 315, 369).
Secular grace emanates as the dawning upon humanity of the virtue of philosophical rationality
The modeling of grace proceeds in a measured way, emphasizing a common purpose and outlook. These elements underpin the cohesion necessary to economic innovation as conducive to the end of wealth creation, without which little of ecological or social value might be achieved. It is not going to be easy to maintain a high-wage urban economy,9 even for only several hundred thousand people. At the corporate level, the case favors sharing and in situ development, both for the City and poorer regions it might assist. It applies the precautionary environmental principle to the physical and social milieu and, in this and other ways, departs from foregoing portrayals of urbanism. Just as Collins (2001) found that the road to corporate greatness was hard but worthwhile, there is a lot involved in moving toward a sustainable and actualized urban future. Yet the way is open to all and, with best practice demonstration, there could, down the years, be more than one City of Grace, again confounding potential charges of exclusivity. Setting aside distracting conflicts about territory and trade, humanity’s top priority will, sooner or later, not be about urban equity (cf. Fainstein 2010) but the greater matter of survival within a destabilized natural system. Grace, inhering rationality, sustainability and system dynamics, offers a way to counter the hubris and, often, benightedness, which destroyed prior civilizations (Diamond 2011). Yet, as a counterpoint to everything written here, the question remains: given their inherent nature, are humans actually capable of creating a City of Grace, even in a secular sense?
Humanity’s top priority, sooner or later, will be its own survival within a destabilized natural system
To close, apologies are due, first, for the unavoidably condensed treatments of themes in this interdisciplinary study and, second, for the lack of a straight answer to the initial question about discovering a candidate city. This deductive approach centered on necessary and sufficient conditions, rather than listing real-world venues. Validating what is still called ‘regional geography,’ the author salutes Lonely Planet writers who could perhaps invite travelers’ input or crowdsourcing, and, from the criteria here, pursue the search10 for grace with a web-based, urban league table. As well, he would encourage goodly souls to build this City, rock by rock, from the ground up. Grace will arrive, hopefully soon in a second Enlightenment, an IPAT age of reason replacing self-destructive with self-determined behavior.