Should we care about neutrality in the city?

Abstract

Neutrality in political philosophy is a contested idea. The paper argues that there are valid moral reasons to incorporate neutrality in spatial organization considerations, by appealing to universal reasons rather than sectarian reasons. This is a view that defends ‘justificatory neutrality’. The paper responds to previous concerns regarding the applicability of neutrality in the spatial sphere, arguing that the conception of justificatory neutrality successfully addresses these concerns. Yet, the paper raises doubts whether the arguments that persist in the current political philosophy literature can or should, at the end of the day, be applied to the spatial sphere.

Keywords:

• universalism
• neutrality
• spatial organization
• moral values
• minarets

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to Daniel Attas, the Lady Davis Fellowship Trust and to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. https://www.facebook.com/pg/AmericanPlanningAssociation/about/

2. http://www.rtpi.org.uk/about-the-rtpi/corporate-strategy-2015-2020/

3. However, there are writers who consider the Central Capabilities Approach to be patently non-neutral, see for example (Nelson 2008; Claassen 2014).

4. See note 1.