Conversational urbanism

ABSTRACT

Since the turn of the century, the study of urbanism has flourished in powerful disciplines and institutions that had long ignored cities. At the same time, for those working in fields with long urban traditions it has been more difficult to find common ground, to work contstructively through our differences as we search for justice amidst the evolutionary inequalities of an urbanizing planet. People in cities, as well as people who do urban “research,” are struggling to listen and learn from one another amidst intensifying competition. In this essay, I describe how Robert Lake’s adaptation of pragmatism for the twenty-first century offers a hopeful, intergenerational project of “conversational urbanism” for the collective but diversifying human pursuit of better lives.

KEYWORDS:

• pragmatism
• cognitive capitalism
• Dewey
• John
• Hayek
• Friedrich
• Lake
• Robert W.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Kathe Newman and James Defilippis for organizing our panel engagement with Bob Lake’s work. I am grateful to Andrew Jonas and Kathe Newman for valuable comments on earlier versions of this essay.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).