Ethics and Politics of the Built Environment Gardens of the Anthropocene [Hardcover]

This book proposes and defends the practice of urban gardening as an ecologically and socially beneficial, culturally innovative, morally appropriate, ethically uplifting, and politically incisive way for individuals and variously networked collectives to contribute to a successful management of some defining challenges of the Anthropocene  this new epoch in which no earthly place, form, entity, process, or system escapes the reach of human activity  including urban resilience and climate change.? ?

Chapter One: Gardens and the Anthropocene.- What this book is.- What this book is not.- Aims and structure of the book.- State of the art.- The Anthropocene.- The planet and I.- Chapter Two: Gardens and Cities.- Cities.- Food.- City Gardens.- Ecological benefits of urban gardening.- Social benefits of urban gardening.- Concluding remarks.- Chapter Three: Gardens and Culture.- The nature/culture divide.- Human exceptionalism.- Anthropocentrism.- Concluding remarks.- Chapter Four: Gardens and Morals.- Individual moral obligations in the Anthropocene.- Self-offsetting.- Urban gardening and systemic reform.- Why gardening.- Concluding remarks.- Chapter Five: Gardens and Ethics.- Virtue.- Environmental virtue.- Virtue in the Anthropocene.- Virtues for the Anthropocene.- Concluding Remarks.- Chapter Six: Gardens and Politics.- Governance Challenges.- Legitimacy challenges.- The Anthropocene and the public/private distinction.- Environmental pragmatism, agrarianism, and civic republicanism.- Gardens, public goods, and operative democracy.- Concluding remarks.- Conclusion.

Marcello Di Paola is Research and Teaching Fellow at LUISS Guido Carli , Rome, and PostDoc Researcher in the FWF Project New Directions in Plant Ethics at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. His background is in political and environmental philosophy, with a focus on climate change and urban sustainability. He has co-edl³x