The inaugural issue of the Philosophy of the City Journal was published recently.

[Stuart Davis, “New York Mural”]

Over the last 10 years, this group has organised an annual series of conferences and summer colloquia, in addition to a variety of special issues and edited volumes, all of which have furnished new conceptual foundations, methodological approaches, and practical case studies. And yet, despite the volume and vigour of our scholarly cut and thrust, the Research Group and its community have thus far been without a common venue to have these conversations. A dedicated journal was long overdue. The Philosophy of the City Journal is thus born of the need to build on and consolidate this new philosophical tradition, offering a venue for original research into the philosophy of the city.

We conceive of the philosophy of the city as a set of problems without a canon: problems about(but by no means restricted to) the ontology of cities, urban aesthetics, urban technologies, inclusivity, public space, justice, and political expression. In seeking to help answer these problems, philosophers of the city contribute analyses of urbanism, city life, urban planning, urban design, infrastructures, and lots of other things besides. These analyses themselves contribute to our proper understanding and evaluation of cities in their myriad of forms. These analyses are vital for all kinds of  good reasons. Cities are not only places where philosophy happens. They are also, increasingly, the place where most human life happens. As the world continues to urbanise, cities now function as the loci for the social, political, and ecological challenges of the 21st century. There is a need to apply the tools and approaches of philosophical inquiry to the city as both a real and imagined phenomenon, to processes of urbanisation, and to the specific dynamics and challenges of different cities in particular.

You can check out the first issue of the new journal here.

Note: The original version of this post contained an incomplete list of the editors of the journal.