Urban design, ethics and responsive cohesion

The processes and products of urban design are examined in terms of philosopher Warwick Fox's proposition that responsive cohesion is the foundational value in a general ethics. Recognizing an ethics of responsive cohesion places emphasis on connection (not separation), on collaboration (not individualism), and on design as sustaining context (not creating set-piece entities). The discourses of urban design contain many principles and assertions that support these emphases, but they tend to do so by examining and advising on particular sub-areas of the discipline. Fox's work links the analysis and advice in these separate areas and shifts the grounding and authority of the advice from instrumental strategy to ethical value. Drawing on some well-known literature, three scales and themes in urban design are linked together: the city (with systems theory), the neighbourhood (with new urbanism), and the street (with urban aesthetics). Responsive cohesion offers a useful integrating principle for urban design that can be explained and justified as a basis for decisions, whether or not its ethical pre-eminence is accepted.