ABSTRACT
The design process often involves exploring different options and developing a series of alternative solutions to a set of problems. The design that is finally selected is the alternative that is judged to offer the best solution. Other alternatives will have their own points of strength, but this one would be the one that the designers and other key decision makers see as providing the best fit for the task. A key question, therefore, is to know how we arrive at these alternatives, and on what basis we decide that the selected solution is considered to be the best course of action. This is the main theme of practical reasoning and we search for its implications for designing cities by asking: how do we ensure to undertake the best course of action in shaping cities? If the task of practical reason is to help us undertake the best course of action in any particular set of circumstances, then a city of reason would be one in which there are mechanisms for doing so.
