Perfectionist public space: a political philosophy ...

This is an Author’s Own Manuscript of an article published in Space and Polity. When citing please refer to the final, published article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13562576.2018.1485216

Perfectionist public space: a political philosophy approach Public spaces are often sites of contention between competing conceptions of the good life. The potential for such conflicts increases in diverse societies where different ethnic, religious and cultural groups compete for space and representation in the public sphere. A paradigmatic example is the conflict between multiculturalism and conservatism towards the function and character of public spaces. A clear criterion is necessarily, in such conflicts, to determine which conception may be legitimately crowded-out, and which may prevail. The paper examines two strategies to justify such a criterion: a liberal approach and a perfectionist approach. According to the liberal approach, public spaces should reflect the pluralism of values in society, by combining multiplicity and coherence of values. Yet pluralism is too ambiguous a concept to determine, in practice, which conceptions of the good can legitimately be crowded-out, both physically and metaphorically, from the public sphere. Perfectionism, an ethical approach grounded in human developmentalism, holds that the good life is a life of developing and exercising our human capacities. This approach yields a substantive account of public space regulation: public spaces should promote the development and exercise of our human capacities. On this account, we can approach the conflict between competing claims on public spaces by asking whether crowding-out might harm the potential development and exercise of our capacities. The perfectionist approach also provides a finer distinction between different types of conservatisms, such that we may differentiate between conservatism that may be legitimately crowded-out from the spatial sphere, and conservatism which may prevail. This paper argues that a perfectionist approach—one which is explicitly committed to a view of the good life—is both necessary and timely. KEYWORDS: Public space, neutrality, minarets, liberalism, perfectionism

Perfectionist Public Space: A Political Philosophy Approach

Public spaces—city squares, streets, open spaces—are a fundamental part of social and political life. Very often they are objects of contention, when different groups try to establish their own conception of the good life, using force, legislation, or through incremental changes favouring particular interests. Different conceptions of the good life compete with one another for establishing the character of public spaces, and dominant conceptions crowd out less dominant ones. Political philosophy is chiefly concerned with reflecting on how best to arrange our collective life—our political institutions and our social practices (Miller, 1998). As such, it provides a framework within which to determine when crowding out form the public sphere is legitimate and when it is arbitrary. One influential strand of political philosophy— Liberalism—explicitly engages with conflicts over the public sphere (Kymlicka, 1995; Rawls, 1996). Broadly speaking, the liberal approach maintains that the state and its institutions ought to remain neutral towards different conceptions of the good life that exist in society—different religious, moral or philosophical doctrines. In conflicts between conceptions of the good, the liberal approach leans towards pluralism: recognition and inclusion of different conceptions of the good life (Rawls, 1996). In public spaces, these different conceptions are (ideally) accommodated—materially and symbolically—in buildings, facades, streetscapes and the skyline. In this paper I argue that upon reflection, liberal pluralism is inapplicable in conflicts over public spaces and offer an alternative political morality for dealing with such conflicts: perfectionism. Perfectionism, a branch of ethics dating back to Aristotle, rejects neutrality towards the good and offers a substantive account of the good human life: the good life is a life of developing and exercising one’s human capacities to the fullest. It is concerned with human nature and the ways in which the excellent exercise of one’s capacities—to form friendships, to love, to exercise willpower, understanding, innovation—determine one’s well-being 2


(Bradford, 2016). This inquiry naturally leads to ‘political perfectionism’, the view that the state is responsible for promoting good lives by establishing political institutions and implementing policies that create the conditions for the development of our individual human capacities (Wall, 2017). The main point of contention between political liberals and political perfectionists is over state responsibility. Liberals believe that the state should stay away from endorsing any conception of the good life, because otherwise it is acting coercively and illegitimately towards its citizens. Liberalism advocates a pluralist approach—the accommodation of multiple conceptions of the good—by exercising neutrality towards them, i.e. by refraining from casting judgment on their intrinsic worth (Quong, 2011). Perfectionists, on the other hand, argue that the state should be held responsible for providing the conditions for good lives, for two reasons. First, because the state would be failing its citizens if it does not provide the conditions for leading good lives (Raz, 1986). Second, because in many cases, conceptions of the good come into conflict with one another, and the state has no other recourse but to exercise non-neutral value-judgment as to which one is worthier (Ferdman, 2018; Wall, 2001). So long as the state is compelled to endorse certain conceptions of the good and crowd other conceptions out, the reasons for choosing which conceptions to endorse should be made explicit. Further, the conceptions of the good that the state ends up endorsing should be those which ascertain the conditions for the development and exercise of our human capacities. This paper applies the theoretical debate between liberals and perfectionists to conflicts over public spaces. Public spaces are an important part of what the state and its institutions regulate—part of the collective life—so the issue of contested public spaces goes to the heart of the contention between liberals and perfectionists over state responsibility. The paper offers two main arguments: first, that liberal-pluralism is too ambiguous a concept to 3


determine in practice which conceptions of the good can legitimately be crowded-out, both physically and metaphorically, from the public sphere. Second, that in perfectionism we can find the theoretical tools to articulate justifiable, non-arbitrary criteria for the regulation of contested public spaces. A perfectionist approach is therefore both necessary and timely. The paper begins with problematizing contested public spaces. I demonstrate how such conflicts unravel in two contexts: the Israeli-Arab village, and the Swiss constitutional ban on new minarets. Both examples embody a competition between two mutually-exclusive conceptions of the ‘urban commons’: a conservative conception, which endorses an existing spatiality, and a modernizing approach, which endorses spatial transformation. The two examples serve to demonstrate the ways in which liberal-pluralism is too indeterminate when dealing with such conflicts. Subsequently I develop an alternative perfectionist approach to the regulation of public space, which provides criteria for evaluating public spaces according to their contribution to individual human flourishing. I discuss the advantages of a perfectionist framework within which to adjudicate between competing claims on public spaces and discuss some of its caveats.

Conflicts over public spaces as commons Public spaces can be roughly categorized into three groups: public spaces like streets, squares, parks; semi-public spaces like libraries, hospital waiting rooms, transit stations; privatized public spaces, like shopping malls and clubs. This paper focuses on the first type: streets, squares, gardens and parks, and on the entity that emerges when these spaces form the socio-spatial dimension of the public sphere. In Lefebverian terms, it is what is phenomenologically experienced as the ‘commons’ (Kohn, 2016, p. 188). The commons, in this sense, reflects the existence of a common stake or common interest in resources shared with other urban inhabitants (Foster and Iaione, 2016). The reason for focusing on this type 4


of public space is that these spaces impose a particular conception of the good. When different groups compete for public spaces, they often compete for staking a claim on the character of the commons. As such, the conflict over the character of the commons is more than a political struggle for resources or representation. Rather, it is a conflict between different conceptions of the good life, as follows. Recall that liberalism is a political philosophy which holds that the state should be neutral towards conceptions of the good life. Liberalism treats the commons as a ‘multiple public publics’, in which all reasonable conceptions of the good have a place. While liberals are aware that liberalism, as a moral doctrine, crowds out pre-liberal and non-liberal conceptions of the good (Gray, 1996), most liberals endorse pluralism as a justification for crowding out those non-liberal conceptions. The thinking is that the commons, in liberalpluralism, is divisible, in the sense that it can absorb and include multiple conceptions of the good, except those conceptions that undermine pluralism itself. One of the non-liberal conceptions of the good that is at risk of being crowded by liberalism is conservatism. Here, conservatism is not intended to imply bigotry or fundamentalism. Both conservatives and non-conservatives can appreciate that in life many good things are lost and many good things created. What distinguishes the conservative from the non-conservative is that the former is disposed to lament the loss more than the nonconservative does (Cohen 2011). For the conservative, the value of a valuable thing is indivisible, and some of the value can be attributed to the thing having been in existence for a long time. Thus, conservatives are keen to preserve what is of indivisible value, given pressures from external forces to transform it. That is not to say that the desire to resist change is necessarily tied to a desire to impose one’s conception of the good on others. Rather, the point is that it is a burden for the conservative to forgo the thing she values. This burden, therefore, should be given (some) moral weight. 5


On the conservative view, the commons is an indivisible entity. It cannot keep absorbing different, incompatible conceptions of the good life, because this absorption transforms its essence and makes it into something else. Thus a conservative may attribute intrinsic value to the town she lives in, the way it currently is. For the conservative, transforming the town, say by diversifying its architectonic style, is not merely a change in the landscape, it is a transformation of its essence. Campaigns to protect the rural countryside are also a case in point: proponents advocate for the preservation of the countryside and of the way of life it enables, not because other ways of life are less valuable, but because something of value will be lost if the countryside will be massively developed. Since the essence of a place, for the conservative, is indivisible, the commons, as manifestation of this essence is also indivisible. And since the essence of public space-as-commons is of intrinsic value for the conservative, transforming it is akin to forgoing its value. Recall that conservatism, as employed here, is the desire to preserve what is of indivisible value, given pressures from external forces to transform it. To the extent that the commons is indivisible, on the conservative view, transforming it is forgoing its value. Again, this is not to endorse a position which rejects any transformation. Rather, the point is to identify more precisely the source of contention over the character of public spaces. In this way we are able to perceive conflicts over public space not exclusively as competition for power (which indeed they often are), but as a conflict between two distinct conceptions of value. On one side we have public space as a liberal-pluralist construction, capable of maintaining its value regardless of how many conceptions of the good it contains and how these conceptions inscribe themselves in the spatiality of the public space. On the other side we have public space as a conservative construction, in which value is indivisible, that is, public space is not capable of absorbing conflicting conceptions of the good without losing its source of value. 6


In the following I demonstrate how the conflict over public spaces-as-commons unfolds in two distinct contexts: the Israeli-Arab village, and a Western-European town facing immigration pressures. Both are examples of a conflict over an indivisible commons. The Israeli-Arab village is an example of a conflict between conservatism and modernization as two incompatible ways of life. The Western-European town, on the other hand, is more directly a case of competition over the symbolic function of the commons. Both examples illuminate different aspects of the challenge facing the liberal approach in dealing with such conflicts, and help argue the case for the perfectionist approach.

Conservatism vs. modernization in the Israeli-Arab village Israeli-Arab villages are one of the worst-off sectors in Israeli society. They exist in the spatial periphery, far from economic opportunities. For years these villages have continuously been denied land allocation, so that their needs in housing and infrastructure are severely underserviced by current spatial organization (Shmueli and Khameyseh, 2015). The spatiality of the Israeli-Arab village is unique: it is a traditional, familial-based spatiality, incongruent with modern Western urbanization (Alfasi and Fenster, 2014). Familial-based spatiality treats the extended family (hamulah) as the basic social unit of the Muslim home, thus reflecting the importance of honouring the family and linking the level of privacy/openness between people with their degree of kinship. When families expand, the hamulah compound—the network of houses—expands with it. These expansions require consensus among family members, neighbours and leaders regarding the development of the built environment (Alfasi, 2014). One planning approach—the ‘traditionalist’ approach—fiercely defends the villagers’ right to generous land allocations, in order to compensate them for past grievances and, importantly, to allow them to maintain their cultural heritage, familial attachments, and local 7


attachments which are dependent on the familial spatiality—the familial compound that grows incrementally. On the other side are ‘modernizers’ who think that compensating past discrimination by such generous low-density, homogenous land allocations is mistaken. They argue that the familial spatiality denies the villagers proper access to opportunities: ‘bringing justice to Arab citizens means supporting the development of their settlements into vital and functioning urban patterns and preventing them from turning into huge agglomerations of low-rise and infrastructure-less environments’ (Alfasi and Fenster, 2014, p. 10). The modernizers’ approach prefers high-density, mixed-use environments that are considerably more conducive to accessibility and thereby enable equality of opportunity. In conflicts over resource allocation, one common liberal strategy is to exercise ‘even-handed treatment’ (Lovett and Whitfield, 2016; Patten, 2012). Even-handed treatment refrains from evaluating the merit of the conceptions of the good that compete for resources, by distributing resources even-handedly, usually through per-capita allocation. This approach is applicable in language policy, for example, where minority language groups are allocated resources to preserve their language according to their relative share in the general population (Patten, 2014). However, the conflict over the character of the Israeli-Arab village requires a different approach. The conflict here is over the character of the commons, where the commons is indivisible. The village can either proceed in a traditional, sprawled spatiality which will serve the interest of preserving cultural heritage and self-determination (Patten, 2014), but which will dramatically decrease their access to employment, services and education opportunities. Alternatively, the village can be rezoned as a compact, dense, and mixed-use environment that provides much better access to the aforementioned opportunities, but which radically minimizes the potential to maintain its familial-based spatiality or their collective self-determination. In other words, the commons in the Israeli-Arab village is either a 8


reflection of a traditional way of life or of a modernized one. The two options are mutuallyexclusive, rendering the liberal proposal of even-handed land allocation conceptually inapplicable (Ferdman, 2017).

Minarets in public spaces Public spaces are often sites of contention over symbolic transformation. I exemplify this contention by presenting a hypothetical conflict between two different cultural groups. This hypothetical case is modelled, loosely, on the 2009 Swiss ban on new minarets. The actual Swiss minaret ban was decided according to reasons that have little to do with liberal considerations, as will be described shortly, and hence cannot serve as a good example of a genuine conflict between equally weighty moral claims. In late 2009, in a context of only a handful of minarets in all of Switzerland, a national referendum was held, resulting in a constitutional ban on the construction of new minarets. Opposition to the ban centred on the idea that the minaret is indispensable for Muslims’ right to freedom of religion (Miller, 2016). Many think that a constitutional ban on adding new minarets is an exaggerated response (Langer, 2010; Pratt, 2013), grounded in Islamophobia, suspicion towards ‘the other’, intolerance towards new immigrants, and an unfair use of the majority’s privileged status (Carens, 2013). The ban has also been criticized on grounds of scope because it is undemocratic, because it singles out the Muslim minority as particularly unwelcome, and discourages them from the hope of influencing the public sphere (Miller, 2016). Since the main focus in this section is to uncover the liberal response to mutuallyexclusive, morally-equal competing claims, the actual Swiss case will not be helpful. It is instructive, however, to extract the relevant features from the actual case in order to build a

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hypothetical case that will showcase a genuine conflict between mutually-exclusive, morallyequal conceptions of the good.

Minarets in a hypothetical case Let us imagine a locality in which there are two main ethnic or religious groups, roughly equal in size, the indigenes and the newcomers. The indigenes, in that particular locality, are a ‘diminishing majority’: a majority that is facing a significant challenge in maintaining its way of life (due, among other things, to migration). This challenge is not necessarily limited to maintaining liberal institutions, but also a challenge to the diminishing majority’s particular way of life and its distinctive vision of the good (Orgad, 2015). In our hypothetical locality, the Swiss indigenes may qualify as a diminishing majority. As such, a number of additional minarets may make the landscape significantly different from what the indigenes recognize and cherish. If we frame the conflict as a competition between freedom of religion (erecting minarets) and protection of an aesthetic taste (preserving an existing skyline), then indeed it may look like freedom of religion outweighs aesthetic taste, because freedom of religion has moral superiority over aesthetic/cultural tastes. However, minarets are not necessarily essential for meaningful exercise of religion. It is more likely that minarets have a symbolic, rather than a strictly religious, role in the public sphere. This is important, because if one wants to argue that minarets are indispensable for the exercise of religion one has to engage with doctrine (Miller, 2016, p. 9), which would defy the liberal commitment to stay out of such discourse. On the other hand, if one concedes that minarets should be discussed as having symbolic value, one has to accept that other things, like national or cultural heritage, may have symbolic value for others. Adjudicating between the symbolic values in public spaces will require less-than-purely neutral 10


considerations. The purpose of the hypothetical case is to show that a preference for an aesthetic environment can be more than a mere taste, i.e. it may have symbolic value, and thus it may be part of a comprehensive doctrine, just as a minaret is part of a comprehensive religion. One of the reasons for preserving the Swiss cityscape is that the architectonic environment is a fundamental feature of the Swiss culture. Its transformation would threaten the existence of the national heritage, which is valued by the Swiss and a fundamental aspect of their conception of the good. A historic nation has a right to ‘preserve and enjoy the value they have thereby created. Part of that value is material, but another part is symbolic, as the territory comes to bear the imprint of the national culture’ (Miller, 2016, p. 12). Thus, the national culture, including its public spaces, is not a mere taste, it is a constitutive element in the comprehensive doctrine held by the Swiss people. Note that the role of the hypothetical case is neither to provide an argument in favour of preservation nor in favour of transformation. Rather, it is meant to provide an example of instances in which ethnic or religious groups have competing claims over the symbolic character of the public space-as-commons, and in each case the burden of the chosen policy is both real and roughly equal. This is a case of mutually-exclusive options, where whichever decision is taken, it will be either a commitment to the Swiss indigenes’ convictions or deference to the Muslim newcomers. In other words, there is no way to accommodate minarets without transforming the cultural heritage of the indigenes, and vice versa.

The public space challenge for liberal neutrality The examples of the Israeli-Arab village and the hypothetical diminishing Swiss majority town demonstrate that conceptions of the good are very much spatially dependent. Many conceptions of the good life require a public sphere that provides the positive means by 11


which these conceptions can be exercised. It is not sufficient that the public sphere is accommodating in the negative-liberty sense. Rather, the public sphere has to be organized in such a way that enables the practice of those conceptions. When it comes to public spaces, a liberal approach which insists only on the application of negative liberty (i.e. freedom from coercion), builds in an inherent bias in favour of individualistic conceptions, such that do not require a public sphere or much collective efforts. The examples also highlight that public spaces are often mutually-exclusive. Sometimes one public space cannot accommodate two incompatible conceptions at the same time. One reason for this is that public spaces are prone to path-dependence, whereby an establishment of a certain conception of the good in the public sphere means that in the future, its spatiality, and not others, is going to be the dominant one. For example, modernizing the Arab village means that the conservative way of life will be driven out, precisely because it is dependent on a familial spatiality etched in the built environment, which will be effectively eradicated—in the physical and metaphorical sense—with the modernized spatiality. So far, the examples merely show that conservatism and change may be mutually exclusive, at least in the spatial realm. This, by itself, is not yet a fatal objection to liberalism. The liberal may appeal to neutral criteria for deciding when a certain conception of the good may be legitimately crowded out. Such neutral criteria will not need to examine the truth or merit of the conceptions in question (see especially Quong 2011; Rawls 1996). Rather, these criteria rest on universal values, values that no reasonable person will reject. Two such possible neutral criteria are relative harms and freedom of exit. The examples, however, illustrate a conflict which erupts precisely in situations in which there is fundamental disagreement between liberals and conservatives over these prima facie universal criteria of relative harms and freedom of exit, as follows: when two mutually12


exclusive conceptions of the good compete for space, the liberal will want to avoid evaluating the merit, truth or superiority of these conceptions of the goods. Instead, she might propose to evaluate the relative harms that either the traditionalists or the modernizers will endure from being crowded out. Yet evaluating harms involves comparing how different harms ultimately affect one’s ability to exercise one’s conception of the good. Furthermore, determining the relative weight of the burdens that the traditionalists or the modernizers will have to suffer should be made according to the degree to which the spatial policy will restrict liberties or if it will unreasonably burden either side. However, in the background of such an evaluation, there will also be a non-liberal judgment about the best human life (Ferdman, 2017), because determining which policy will restrict the liberty to live one’s life according to one’s plans and goals requires value judgments about the merits of those plans and goals. Comparing the actual and hypothetical minaret cases will shed some light on this argument. In the actual case, given that Muslims in Switzerland are a disempowered minority, and given that at the time of the ban there were only a handful of minarets in Switzerland, balancing the burdens that each policy creates will convince most reasonable persons that the burden of a constitutional minaret ban on Muslims in Switzerland is greater than the burden on the Swiss majority from allowing minarets. The hypothetical case, however, shows that since the burdens are roughly equal, we do need a further criterion to help us determine which burden is morally weightier. Similarly, in the Israeli-Arab village case, the burden that each policy creates cannot be determined based on aggregation of individual burdens since there are similar numbers of persons in each party. In these scenarios, determining which policy will limit one’s liberty to pursue one’s reasonable conception of the good has to appeal to the value or merit of each conception. Comparing harms to the traditionalists/indigenes with harms to the modernizers/newcomers, and deciding that the latter is graver, is to implicitly invoke reasons 13


that are grounded in a sectarian, controversial, conception of the good. Because what is at stake is symbolic value, not basic liberties, balancing the harms cannot but engage the issue of whether the symbolic value of the built heritage is more or less central to the Swiss’ convictions compared to the minarets for Muslims. This is precisely the sort of questions that the liberal view aims to avoid (Nagel, 1987), yet such abstinence is impossible in mutuallyexclusive conflicts over public spaces. And so, the liberal attempt to resolve conflicts over public space by comparing relative harms is inapplicable, because there is no common (neutral) ground to serve as the benchmark from which to compare those harms. The second reason why we cannot resolve public space conflicts by exercising neutrality is that there are bound to be disagreements between the liberal and the conservative about the legitimacy of ‘freedom of exit’. On the liberal view, the freedom of exit criterion is the following:

Persons should be free to vote with their feet and move to a locality which matches their tastes and preferences provided that basic rights and background justice obtains.1 Once background justice obtains, a person’s conception of the good does not necessarily have to be accommodated in the exact place in which they currently reside. According to the liberal ‘freedom of exit’ criterion, the traditionalists in the Arab village who wish to maintain their lifestyle, can simply move to another village that has kept its

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The conditions for bbackground justice are equality of liberties of citizenship, liberty of conscience, freedom of thought and fair equality of opportunity. In addition, background justice requires that the state’s basic institutions regulate the fundamental terms of social cooperation to secure the continuity of fair terms of cooperation among persons (Rawls, 2001).

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traditional spatiality. The indigenous diminishing majority from the hypothetical minaret locality could similarly move to an adjacent village. To generalize, so long as freedom of exit exists, the liberal will be happy with self-sorting of communities based on their respective tastes. There are several reasons to suspect the applicability of the freedom of exit criterion in public space conflicts. First, while exit might imply non-coercion, it does not necessarily entail genuine freedom of choice. For example, the Arab village is an indivisible idea to the traditionalists. It is their village, with its familial ties, its spatial qualities, and this attachment cannot be reinstalled somewhere else. In both the hypothetical minaret case and the Arab village, assuming that the dissatisfied should not complain because they could restart their lives someplace else, is to deny or belittle place attachments as a source of value in one’s conception (Adams, 2015; Altman and Low, 1992; Casakin, Hernández, and Ruiz, 2015). To say that moving to another village is just as good as staying in your own village as long as certain stylistic and social elements exist there, is to make an evaluative judgment about the importance of one’s ‘place’ to one’s life. It is also to disregard the collective aspect of place attachments, because it is to assume that relocating pertains only to the individual in question, and to downplay the interdependence between people (Campbell, 2006). Moreover, denying place attachment as constitutive of one’s conception of the good is to invoke a substantive conception of divisibility. The liberal will hold that place attachments are divisible: a person can move and recreate her life elsewhere without significant social and emotional costs. Yet this is to implicitly assume that place attachments are divisible. A conservative will have a different account of place attachments, in which attachment to place is indivisible, and therefore not capable of recreation in other places. The upshot is that in order for the liberal to determine which policy creates greater harms—modernisation or preservation—one has to engage in judgments about things that 15


constitute the good life. That evaluating harms requires a non-neutral account of the good life can be demonstrated by an analogy to gentrification. Gentrification is a process in which cheaper neighbourhoods attract more affluent residents, raising housing prices and driving out original residents. On the one hand, the original residents are not coerced to leave, and they enjoy freedom of exit. On the other hand, gentrification causes harms such as displacement, scattering of communities and dissolution of social networks (Atkinson, 2000; Kohn, 2013; Slater, 2006, 2009). The point is that if the harm caused by displacement through gentrification is real, then by analogy displacement through modernization can also be harmful. If displacement causes harm, then telling the traditionalists that they can move to a different village is to implicitly assume that there are no costs involved in the move. This is to impose on the traditionalists a conception of the good which prioritizes footloose-ness. It is also to unilaterally impose a conception of value-divisibility, even though some values are indivisible, at least according to a conservative point of view. The upshot is that so long as reliance on freedom of exit includes an implicit belittling of displacement, a liberal may not appeal to it as a neutral justification for crowding-out decisions. To recap the argument so far, liberal-pluralism aspires to maintain neutrality towards conceptions of the good life, by refraining from making value-judgments about the merit or intrinsic value of competing conceptions. Nevertheless, in mutually-exclusive contexts the liberal appeal to a common (neutral) ground from which to judge relative harms is in fact non-neutral, because it implicitly imposes value judgments about the intensity of the harm to each group. Moreover, it belittles place attachments by assuming that persons are free to move around and recreate their life without substantial cost. Since liberals and conservatives disagree on the common ground from which to evaluate harms and costs, the liberal cannot invoke this common ground as neutral.

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This analysis demonstrates that the liberal-pluralist approach is inapplicable in conflicts over public spaces, conflicts that occur when two incompatible conceptions of the good compete for public space and for establishing the character of the commons. Since it is not possible to maintain neutrality towards conceptions of the good in such contexts, and since one conception of the good will inevitably crowd the other out, we should want to establish criteria for justifying when such crowding out is legitimate, so as to avoid moral arbitrariness. I offer perfectionism as an ethical framework for articulating such criteria.

Perfectionism Perfectionism is the view that the human good is constituted by the development and excellence in our characteristically human capacities (Bradford, 2017). Human capacities include rationality, innovation, growth, imagination, creativity, insight, understanding and engaging with the world. On the perfectionist view, human beings flourish when they are “developing properly and fully, that is, by growing, maturing, making full use of the potentialities, capacities, and faculties (under favourable conditions) they naturally have at an early stage of their existence” (Kraut, 2007, p. 131). Importantly, while perfectionism is concerned first and foremost with understanding individual flourishing, it includes relationships with others as a fundamental element of individual flourishing. Some perfectionist theories are more explicit than others with regards to the things that contribute to human flourishing. Christine Sypnowich reinterprets Martha Nussbaum’s capability list (2000) so that it includes: food, shelter, health, education, friendship and love, participation in public life, play and sport, experiences of nature, culture and opportunities for intellectual reflection (Sypnowich, 2016). Other perfectionists defend an Aristotelian approach to the human good: the good life is achieved when we perfect our physical capacities, our theoretical rationality and our practical rationality (see Hurka, 1993). Another 17


version of perfectionism defends an objective list of things that universally correspond to ‘fundamental human goals’ (Sher, 1997): moral goodness, rational activity, the development of one’s abilities, meaningful and close personal relations, knowledge and aesthetic appreciation, decency and good taste. According to these perfectionist theories, the perfection of our human capacities can and should be achieved in different, varied ways, and it should not be the prerogative of only the most talented persons in society (Hurka, 1993). This is why perfectionism is often associated with a well-rounded life: because a good life involves the development and excellence of our human capacities, and because each individual has multiple capacities, a good life is achieved by developing all of one’s capacities to some degree. The good life is the achievement of ‘unity in diversity’, of coherence without sacrificing variety or richness, well-roundedness instead of narrow specialized achievements (Hurka, 1993; Kauppinen, 2008). According to the well-roundedness account, there is value not only in exercising each human capacity separately, but there is also value in exercising human capacities simultaneously. This is valuable because a well-rounded life achieves a more complex combination of one’s diverse capacities across one’s life.

Common features of perfectionist goods What type of environment is the most amenable for developing and exercising our diverse human capacities? Although the perfectionist theories above defend different things that contribute to the good life, we can nevertheless identify certain characteristics that these things share: generality, diversity, complexity and cooperation. This will help articulate the criteria for perfectionist-supporting environments: environments that are characterized by uses which enable general, diverse, complex and cooperative pursuits. The following discusses each criterion in turn. 18


Generality Generality means that as humans, our individual capacities are exercised to the fullest when engaged with things that are organized in a hierarchical structure of goals and achievements. For example, say I form a goal to help protect the natural environment. To successfully pursue this goal, I will form certain goals and pursuits that will engage a combination of my capacities: I might choose to study and work for the environment; recycle and reuse whenever possible; organize environmentally-aware activities in my locality, etc. By contrast, if I do not have general goals and pursuits, if my goals are fleeting and shallow, if I form a new goal every day and discard my previous goals, I will not be able to develop and exercise my capacities to the fullest. A structure of organized, hierarchical goals contributes to the good human life in that it enables a greater unity in one’s life through a more balanced development of one’s capacities (Hurka, 1993, p. 121). Moreover, having general goals and pursuits is good not only because they contribute to a balanced development of one’s individual capacities, but also because having general goals, like protecting the environment, extends to the good of other persons as well. This is valuable because it contributes to the goods of sociability and caring for others, and also because it contributes to the development of others’ capacities, by helping to create and sustain a background of shared interests and goals. Thus, when we think about the kind of material and social environment which best supports the good life, we will want to consider how this environment nurtures and encourages the formation and pursuit of general goals and engagements, an issue which will come up when we examine public spaces and the way the enable or inhibit the formation of hierarchical goals and pursuits.

Diversity A life which consists of varied activities is preferable to a life that consists of a single 19


activity. The first kind of life is better if the different activities are chosen (partly) for their own sake, and not merely because they contribute to another activity (Hurka, 1993, p. 127). From a perfectionist point of view, intrinsically-valuable goods such as knowledge, achievement, loving relationships, moral virtue and pleasure have more value when they are combined: things will be judged as intrinsically good when they promote a well-rounded life, and when they cross-fertilize each other, both within an individual and across individuals (Hurka, 2006). In this way, diversity of goals and pursuits also contributes to the generality of goals and pursuits: goals that are general are composed of other goals, which are sufficiently diverse so as to contribute to a comprehensive hierarchy of goals. Thus, we develop and exercise our capacities in more diverse and balanced ways compared to the pursuit of a single activity or an uncomplicated goal. In this way we achieve ‘unity in diversity’: having a certain structure that unifies diverse elements (Bradford, 2017). Moreover, diversity is crucial for the exercise of our individual autonomy. Autonomy is considered by most perfectionist to be valuable for the good life (Bradford, 2017; Raz, 1986). To live an autonomous life, it is essential that this life will consist of acceptable alternatives (Raz, 1986; Wall, 1998). As humans, we have innate drives to do and to be many things: move around, stimulate our senses, exercise our bodies, engage our imagination and affection and occupy our mind. Autonomy thus means that a person has the options to exercise these drives, as well as to selectively choose among them. Short-term or negligible options do not provide an adequate range. An adequate range must consist of options that create both short-term and long-term consequences and a decent spread in between. A perfectionist environment will therefore enable access to a diversity of goods, because it will support individual autonomy and nurture the development of our individual human capacities.

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Cooperation Cooperating with others encourages the development of one’s individual human capacities. When a person’s goal extends to other people, that goal is more general and hence better from a perfectionist point of view. Although sometimes the perfection of a capacity requires isolation, at other times it is more successfully achieved when exercised in a group. For example, solving a difficult math problem may be best achieved in isolation, but most intellectual achievements are often communal: we bounce ideas off each other, learn from constructive criticism, absorb new ideas from others, etc. Obviously, cooperation is advantageous not only for developing our intellectual capacities but for other capacities as well, for example in sports, community organizations etc. Cooperation therefore contributes to diversity and generality of goals and pursuits, by enabling a well-rounded development of our capacities, towards exercising them in diverse and general engagements. Since cooperating with others contributes to a well-rounded development of our capacities, it follows that environments that encourage cooperation are preferable to environments which inhibit cooperation, all else being equal.

Complexity Challenging ends are preferable to unchallenging ends, from a perfectionist point of view. In complex activities, ‘there is an ability, partly innate and partly trained, to stretch the mind around extended states and compare them in light of global properties’ (Hurka, 1993, p. 124). This is particularly important in the domain of work, where challenging work is generally preferable to repetitious assignments, but it can manifest in many other things in life such as intellectual or cultural pursuits, physical activities and so on. Since complex activities are valuable, then training one’s capacities in complex activities is necessary. Training requires external conditions (facilities, education, a 21


supportive public environment). Importantly, complexity has a social dimension: striving for and achieving perfection, through complex activities requires of others to recognize that complex activities are good and requires of them to promote and support the environment that best provides the conditions for exercising complex activities. Thus, complexity is dependent on cooperation with others, on the existence of others who both appreciate complexity and who participate in creating and sustaining the conditions for complex goals and achievements. To sum, according to perfectionism, the good life is achieved by developing and exercising our human capacities in a well-rounded way, by forming and pursuing goals that are general, diverse, cooperative and complex. Insofar as such a life is good, we should want the environment one inhabits to promote and encourage the formation of such goals and pursuits. We turn to examine how public spaces can embody this ideal.

Environments that support perfectionism One of the implications of a perfectionist-supportive environment is that it enables free time. Without free time, the existence of the perfectionist goods means little. Access is also a condition that is necessary for most perfectionist such goods as knowledge, meaningful social relations, intellectual pursuits, engagement with things of beauty, nature, etc. For example, one may be free to enjoy nature in a negative-liberty sense (i.e. no legal restrictions), yet unfree if she has no free time, lacks the physical means to access nature, or lacks the awareness of nature’s contribution to her flourishing. This lack of awareness is important, as a growing body of evidence shows, since many children nowadays suffer from ‘denaturation’ (Faber Taylor and Kuo, 2006). Even if these children, as adults, will have free time and access to nature it will be so far removed from their lives that they will no longer be capable of perceiving nature as a source of flourishing. Generalizing from this example, the idea of 22


access, therefore, denotes physical access—being able to reach places—and epistemic access—being exposed to ideas and values that shape our goals and pursuits. Free time and access to opportunities are interdependent. A major obstacle to free time among working adults is commute time: time spent in commuting is time that cannot be spent on flourishing activities, especially when commuting is done by driving. In general, the larger the distance between worthwhile activities, or the more complicated the route (i.e. multiple changes in travel modes), the less likely one is to engage in these activities (Martens, 2017). Accessibility, in this sense, means the ease of reaching intrinsically worthy activities. The more accessible a place, the less time is wasted on instrumental mobility. The following makes a distinction between environments that support accessibility and environments that hinder it:

Single-use spaces are zones that contain one primary use and that use only. Examples of single-use spaces include: zoned business and residential areas; the modern dormitory suburb; the housing project; the government centre; the medical centre; the cultural centre; the shopping centre; the airport; the highway; the greenbelt; fast food restaurants; the motel; the exhibition centre. They are ‘designed by planners or entrepreneurs who have only one thing in mind, and used by similarly single-use citizens. Entering space of this sort we are characteristically in a hurry’ (Walzer, 1986, p. 470).

Multi-use spaces, on the other hand are ‘designed for a variety of uses, including unforeseen and unforeseeable uses, and used by citizens who do different things and are prepared to tolerate, even take an interest in, things they don’t do. When we enter this sort of space, we are characteristically prepared to loiter’ (Walzer, 1986, pp. 470–1). Multi-use spaces include: the central city/downtown, the urban quarter, the neighbourhood with its own stores, shops,

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small factories; the street; the city park or playground; the urban block; the university campus; the café, pub or cafeteria where people are encouraged to linger; specialty street stores; the square or piazza. Note that a residential street which contains shops or other pedestrian-friendly uses will be classified as multi-use, because it provides residents and pedestrians the opportunity to do multiple things (walk, meet other people, shop etc.). Multi-use public spaces are more conducive for perfectionism, compared to single-use spaces, because they provide more opportunities for exercising our human capacities in diverse ways. First, when they are designed well, multi-use spaces are advantageous for cooperation, because they encourage sociability. Since activities are in proximity to one another in multi-use spaces, people walk more in these environments, compared to single-use environments (Feuillet et al., 2018; Gehl, 1987; Saelens and Handy, 2008). Walking provides the opportunity to develop and exercise our social capacities in public spaces through the nurture of trust. Jane Jacobs famously defended walkability as a condition for nurturing trust: ‘The trust of a city street is formed over time from many, many little public sidewalk contacts. It grows out of people stopping by at the bar for a beer, getting advice from the grocer and giving advice to the newsstand man, comparing opinions with other customers at the bakery… most of it is ostensibly utterly trivial but the sum is not trivial at all—it is a feeling for the public identity of people, a web of public respect and trust’ (Jacobs, 1961, p. 56). Sociability and respect for others is dependent on public spaces where contact is made possible (Kohn, 2004). Public space, in this sense, is not merely an area which is not privately owned. Rather, it is a richer concept of the ‘public’, it is where persons may encounter one another, in their similarities and their differences. While most types of mobility occur in public space (e.g. car traffic on public roads), it is still the case that the more meaningful type

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of contact is more plausible where persons are able to engage with each other face-to-face, as in pedestrian-friendly environments. Pedestrian mobility, in turn, is more prevalent in multiuse spaces, compared to single-use ones (Ellard, 2015). The upshot is that multi-use spaces encourage sociability, which is an important venue for the development and exercise of our emotional, affective, and social capacities through interacting with others. Second, multi-use public spaces promote diversity in human goals and pursuits, because they provide the opportunity to encounter unforeseen and unforeseeable ideas, and are used by citizens who do different things and are prepared to tolerate, even take an interest in, things they don’t do. This makes for a richer cultural and intellectual public space experience, which plausibly encourages the formation of new ideas and goals. Encountering new values and ideals in the public sphere may spark one’s imagination or invite one to engage in new and different activities, thus contributing to the development of new individual capacities or to the exercise of existing capacities in new ways. Third, multi-use public spaces enable complexity in human goals and pursuits. Multiuse environments, which encourage unforeseen encounters or experiences, invite a degree of openness to the unexpected or unintended. From a perfectionist point of view, pursuits are more challenging when one has to deal with (a reasonable degree of) unexpected occurrences, encounter new ideas and grapple with different values than one’s own. An achievement will be more valuable when complex compared to a simple accomplishment, because part of the value of an achievement comes from exercising one’s capacity to will (Bradford, 2015), including attending to things that are unexpected. Multi-use public spaces are better placed to provide opportunities for dealing with unexpected events, in a way which contributes to the development of one’s will, imagination, understanding and innovation. Although complexity is more plausible in multi-use spaces, can complexity be present in a collection of single-use spaces? This is unlikely. A chain of single-use spaces is not 25


conducive to perfectionism for two related reasons. Accessing the same level of cultural, political and economic activities in a chain of single-use spaces takes much more time and effort compared to multi-use space. Single-use spaces require negotiating longer distances in more cumbersome trips, thereby limiting exposure to and awareness of alternatives. A string of single-minded spaces therefore encroaches on free time which is a condition for flourishing. Moreover, following I.M. Young’s observation that physical separation can make persons oblivious to injustice (Young, 2000, p. 208), I argue that physical separation can also make persons oblivious to complexity. The conditions for meaningful encounters with valuable ideas or models are hampered by the separation of land uses, where persons end up encountering people who generally resemble only themselves. Single-use spaces, it can be argued, decrease the exposure to complex ideas, because they do not present opportunities to deal with things that are different and epistemically more challenging. At this point one might wonder whether multi-use public spaces actually invite more conflict precisely because they accommodate multiple, potentially incompatible uses compared to single-use environments. Note, however, that the justification for multi-use spaces is that it contributes to the perfectionist goods of generality, diversity, cooperation and complexity. If a multi-use place creates conflict or disruption, then the good of cooperation is absent, and hence the public space does not live up to the perfectionist ideal. Furthermore, a multi-use environment has to be coherent, in order for the multiplicity of uses not to collapse into chaos. Recall that the perfectionist criteria of generality and diversity support one another in creating ‘unity in diversity’. If a multi-use public space is merely diverse without providing coherence, it will fail on the perfectionist criteria. The upshot is that for a multi-use space to be a “good” space, it needs to feature a well-balanced combination of opportunities for generality, diversity, complexity and cooperation.

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Applying the perfectionist framework to public space conflicts So far we have an account of multi-use spatiality in public spaces, grounded in perfectionist ethics. It is time to apply this concept to the question we began with, which is the legitimacy of crowding out certain conceptions of the good from the public sphere. Specifically, to articulate criteria for determining when an existing spatiality may be protected from radical transformation. In other words, these criteria help determine when conservatism can legitimately crowd-out other conceptions from public space, and vice versa: when other conceptions of the good may legitimately crowd conservatism out. The distinction between a single-use and multi-use spatiality leads to the following principles:

1st Principle: It is morally legitimate to crowd-out conservatism when conservatism requires single-use spaces.

2nd Principle: When conservatism does not require single-use spaces, additional considerations are necessary to determine when it is legitimate to crowd it out.

These two principles help distinguish between public space conflicts in which conservatism is manifested in a single-use spatiality threatening a multi-use spatiality (principle 1), and public-space conflicts in which conservatism is manifested in a multi-use spatiality clashing with another multi-use spatiality (principle 2). The Israeli-Arab village belongs in the first category: there the conflict is between a single-use spatiality (the traditionalists) and multiuse spatiality (the modernizers). The traditional spatiality of the Israeli-Arab village, with its sprawled built environment and poor access to opportunities puts it closer to a single-use space, compared to a modernized village. The perfectionist ethics therefore pulls towards a

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multi-use spatiality, even if it means, regrettably, the crowding out of the traditionalist way of life. The case of the hypothetical Swiss town is different and more challenging, because it is not necessarily a conflict between a single-use and a multi-use spatiality. Rather, the conflict may very well be between two different multi-use spaces: one which is characterized by the indigenous heritage and the other characterized by the newcomers’ heritage. For simplicity, imagine on the one hand a town which has four church spires, a medieval network of grid streets and three minarets, which would represent how public space would like according to Swiss preferences. On the other hand, imagine a town which has four minarets, a street-plan based on a series of courtyards and three church spires, reflecting the newcomers’ preference for public spaces. In both scenarios the town has an excellent system of public transport, walkable and well-connected public areas and high quality public services like public libraries, parks, etc. Both spatialities provide access to diverse, complex and cooperative opportunities within and beyond the town. Principle 2, therefore, is applicable for this case, since it is a competition between two mutually-exclusive multi-use spatialities. Here the generality criterion can be of help in determining the moral legitimacy of public space regulation. Recall that the generality criterion holds that things have more value the greater their extent is. Cultural heritage extends between generations, it includes persons in that culture’s past, present and future, and therefore contributes to the generality of engagements. The indigenes—the diminishing minority—can argue that their attachment to their heritage deserves to be respected and protected in public spaces, since it is a manifestation of the generality requirement. This leads to the following principle:

3rd principle: When conservatism is held by a diminishing majority, and it manifests perfectionist characteristics (generality, diversity, complexity and cooperation), the 28


generality criterion can rule in favour of preserving the indigenous conception of space. The upshot is that the diminishing majority may legitimately implement policies that will maintain the indigenous spatiality. One may still wonder, however, if the generality requirement applies to the indigenes, why does it not apply with equal force to the newcomers? In other words, if the generality requirement is meant to provide a sense of continuation between generations, and to ensure the survival of a culture’s heritage, doesn’t it follow that the newcomers are entitled to the same continuity, by recreating their spatiality in their new home? The answer is that the value of the existing spatiality may very well outweigh the value of a new spatiality. The existing spatiality is a reflection of the local heritage. It is a cultural accomplishment, and a manifestation of human creativity in a particular socio-spatial context. In other words, it is the excellent exercise of human capacities of previous and current generations, who have created and sustained the built environment and have made it what it is. As such, the existing spatiality manifests both cooperation and generality: cooperation of individuals in a shared project, within and across generations, and generality in the continuation of cultural heritage from one generation to the next. An analogy might be useful to defend the argument that existing spatiality has value in virtue of its existence in a particular place. Imagine that instead of a community of Muslims, a community of post-modernist architects move into a Swiss town, with the intention of transforming the town in the post-modern style. The new style may be aesthetically pleasing, more functional and technologically more advanced. Yet the indigenes can argue that their spatiality and their built heritage have more intrinsic value compared to the new style, simply in virtue of it having been in existence, and of having been in existence

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there. It does not strike us as particularly oppressive when building codes are written in order to preserve existing architecture and landscapes against corporate-style hyper development. The important moral sentiment at work here is that these preservation bylaws are aimed at preserving what is of value, against unchecked development and unrestrained replacement of the existing with new things. This sentiment is the same in the post-modernist analogy as it is in the hypothetical minaret case. The upshot is that a diminishing majority can legitimately protect its built heritage, when otherwise the spatial arrangement manifests generality, diversity, cooperation, and complexity.

Conclusions Conflicts over the character of public spaces and the urban commons are often inevitable in diverse or multi-cultural cities. While this paper aims to show a liberal approach is too indeterminate with regards to resolving such public space conflicts, the argument is not meant to reject the liberal commitment to toleration and respect for reasonable pluralism. Rather, the paper argues for a more substantive account of pluralism, particularly in public spaces. A perfectionist ethics, that views the good life as a life of developing and exercising our human capacities, is capable of capturing this substantive account of pluralism and provide a framework from which to assess the legitimacy of competing claims on public spaces. One advantage of the perfectionist approach compared to the liberal approach is that the former does not have to remain neutral with regards to the goodness of spaces and places. In contrast, the liberal approach is indeterminate on questions such as the goodness of multiuse spaces vs. single-use spaces. So long as communities self-sort themselves into homogenous enclaves without oppression or domination, the liberal approach will remain silent. A liberal may therefore have to refrain from evaluating the goodness of a (just) sprawled society. While a society such as this may be tolerant or just, it is not necessarily the 30


optimal society for persons to flourish in. Moving from a tolerant society to a society of flourishing requires a substantive account of the good, one which the perfectionist approach does provide. It is important to stress, however, that there are limits to what a perfectionist ethics can achieve. While the perfectionist approach offers planners and local governments a richer account of the public sphere, it does not provide an exact formula for determining precisely how the public space, as commons, should look or function. Yet this is perhaps both a weakness and a strength. At first glance, it is a weakness because perfectionism is abstract, far removed from everyday life: in order to determine which conception of the good life can legitimately dominate public space, we have to dive deep into philosophical discourse on the good life, on what gives things their intrinsic value. This is something that planners, decision makers and the public are on the whole perhaps not accustomed to. On second thought, however, we do expect persons—professionals and the public alike—to be able to appreciate and employ sophisticated arguments of rights, justice and equality in the planning process. The point is that if we expect the different parties in the planning process to apply arguments of rights, justice and equality, it is not a huge epistemic leap from these arguments to arguments of intrinsic value and the good. In other words, it is not about the degree of sophistication of the arguments that persons bring to the debate, but rather about the legitimacy and relevance of different philosophical thought systems to the debate. Still, planning problems are often urgent and require immediate measures. Arguments imported from perfectionist ethics are less prevalent in the public discourse (compared to liberal-ethics arguments about rights, justice or equality), and as such are going to be harder to introduce into the planning process and implement in urgent situations.

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On the other hand, that perfectionism is abstract makes it an open-ended approach, which is advantageous when applied to contextualized, localized spatial conflicts. Persons arguably know why they care about their heritage, about their own conception of the good, the degree to which they have place attachments and the degree to which their place attachment is fundamental to their conception of the good. Therefore, the planning process need not confine itself to debates about lofty, epistemically inaccessible ideas. Rather, arguments about the good can be contextualized and situated, making them potentially more accessible to both practitioners and the public. On balance, therefore, there are good reasons to introduce perfectionist arguments about the good into debates about contested public spaces, and potentially into other policy areas as well.

Notes on Contributor Dr. Avigail Ferdman is the Joint Berlin-Jerusalem Post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Political Science, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on public goods, well-being, distributive justice and spatial justice.

Acknowledgments I wish to thank Margaret Kohn, Wayne Sumner, Stephanie J. Silverman, Clifton Mark, and

Mara Marin for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. I am also very grateful for the insightful comments from the editor and the anonymous reviewer.

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