Rational city: Universal rationality versus multiple rational urban strategies

Ali­na O. Kosti­na
Insti­tute of Phi­los­o­phy, Russ­ian Acad­e­my of Sci­ences

Ratio­nal city: Uni­ver­sal ratio­nal­i­ty ver­sus mul­ti­ple ratio­nal urban strate­gies

Abstract. The issue of either uni­ver­sal or “region­al” nature of ratio­nal­i­ty can poten­tial­ly be giv­en some new insights through the exam­ple of urban stud­ies. Is city a ratio­nal struc­ture? Does it have only one or mul­ti­ple strate­gies of ratio­nal­i­ty? This paper attempts to give a pos­si­ble answer to the scope of these com­plex epis­te­mo­log­i­cal ques­tions. Alter-native sources of ratio­nal city behav­ior are pre­sent­ed in a num­ber of groups of inter­est: city res­i­dents and urban move­ments, local gov­ern­ment, busi­ness, etc. All of them have cer­tain goals and ways of their achieve­ment. Although they dif­fer, we can­not doubt their ratio­nal nature. At the same time, the con­flict­ing man­ner of city inter­ac­tions makes com­ing to terms with each oth­er a tall order. Urban plan­ning as a move­ment and an insti­tu­tion­al medi­a­tor of struc­tur­al and orga­ni­za­tion­al city changes is con­stant­ly in the process of par­a­dig­mat­ic changes: start­ing from utopi­an projects, through ratio­nal com­pre­hen­sive plan­ning to com­mu­nica­tive plan­ning and, final­ly, to a tech­no­crat­ic “oper­a­tional sys­tem” city. All these tran­si­tions encour­age us to ana­lyze thor­ough­ly the issue of urban ratio­nal­i­ty.

Key­words: city, urban plan­ning, ratio­nal­i­ty, urban oper­a­tional sys­tem, smart city, epis­te­mol­o­gy.

DOI: 10.5840/dspl20192335

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