ABSTRACT
Citizens In what follows, I want to make some claims, not exactly arguments, concerning the political implications of the built environment, in particular the way structures of civic and domestic space interact to influence the character of individuals as citizens. These remarks began life as an intervention concerning the ethics of a particular profession, architecture, under conditions of globalization; but soon the lines of argument took a turn – natural-seeming, to me anyway – away from the rather limited concerns of professional conduct, indeed away from ethical theory in the narrow sense, into a more activist direction.1 The tone is unapologetically imperative, yet open-ended. The issues of appropriate professional practice quickly acquire a crucial political dimension. In a sense, my aim is merely an extended illustration of the Aristotelian dictum (minus the naturalism and certainty) that ethics and politics are intimately related, both concerned with how to live well together, how to flourish. Such a project always includes, centrally, issues of placemaking.
