ABSTRACT
Dealing with several stakeholder groups is a sophisticated undertaking. This chapter lays out moral ordering’s structure, showing its internal congruency. For example, it is a consequentialist theory that aims to achieve sensible outcomes wherein municipalities’ roles and objectives come into play. Moral ordering is also a weak anthropocentric enterprise. This point means that humans are prioritized above nonhumans. However, people can still make concessions for nonhumans beyond instrumentality, such as their intrinsic value. Along with these notions, this chapter argues that how we make decisions when dealing with multi-stakeholder groups is itself a moral affair, which is the “problem of moral prioritization.” The issue is that when making decisions wherein one must make a tough call to balance competing interests, say between vulnerable people and an ecosystem, one can criticize the decision if people act so that it puts nonhuman lives above humans. Such situations are inherently problematic, accounting for urban issues found across the world.
