Standard Research Grant: Stuck with the Dominant Urban Form? Technology and the Limits of Ethics in the Built Environment

本项目由科学与社会项目伦理与价值研究组成部分资助，涉及对伦理与技术之间关系的一个方面的实证研究。陷入社会技术群体的道德行为者可能会发现自己陷入困境，我们的意思是，他们参与道德审议和道德行动的能力受到超出他们控制范围的因素的限制或重定向。关于如何生活，在哪里生活，如何生活，建造什么，在哪里建造的决定是道德决定，因为它们对人类的福祉，正义和可持续性有一定的影响。这项研究的一个关键前提是，建筑环境可以被解释为一个大的、分散的社会技术集合。在某种程度上，这种组合表现出顽固，pi期望建筑环境提供无数的机会来卡住。为了验证从这个前提中产生的一些假设，pi将调查目前面临一个主要大都市地区的一系列决策：乔治亚州亚特兰大拟议的环线。环城线是一个雄心勃勃的计划，包括交通走廊、公园和沿着亚特兰大市中心和中城周围废弃铁路线的新开发项目。如果它按计划完成，环线将代表亚特兰大建筑环境的结构和未来发展的重大转变。研究将分四个阶段进行：1)对环线提案及其产生的辩论进行档案研究；2)审查和分析由PI在2003年进行的半结构化访谈的现有记录，作为相关项目的一部分；3)与亚特兰大地区居民的新半结构化访谈；4)根据前几个阶段的结果进行在线调查。pi将特别考虑人们是否以及在多大程度上被困在他们对环线的思考中，以及这些各种各样的停滞是否以及在多大程度上可归因于亚特兰大现有社会技术基础设施的顽固或抵抗。该研究借鉴了几个传统学科（哲学、经济学和技术研究，以及城市规划、道德心理学和环境心理学的一些贡献）的文献，为一个严重的实际问题提供了新的视角：在复杂的情况下难以进行道德思考和行动。这项研究将对环境伦理学不断发展的运动做出三个不同的贡献，即所谓的道德经验现象学：1)对道德思考和行为是否困难以及为什么困难的一些解释；2)将环境伦理延伸到人们实际生活的社会技术环境中；3)关于人们如何体验各种情况和前景的实证研究。该研究将对三个重叠的受众有用：1)环境哲学、城市规划、技术研究和相关领域的学者；2)直接参与亚特兰大环线决策的人员，包括规划者、决策者、开发商和居民；3)其他大城市面临类似决定的人。因此，研究结果将通过大众报刊和向广大公众开放的网站以及通过学术期刊和会议传播。此外，本研究的结果将影响高级人员在环境伦理、经济、政策等方面的教学。

This project, funded by the Ethics and Values Studies component of the Science and Society Program, involves an empirical study into one aspect of the relationship between ethics and technology. Moral agents who are caught up in sociotechnical ensembles can find themselves stuck as a result, by which we mean that their capacity to engage in ethical deliberation and ethical action is limited or redirected by factors beyond their control. Decisions about how and where to live and how, what, and where to build are ethical decisions to the extent that they have some bearing on human well-being, justice, and sustainability. A crucial premise of the research is that the built environment may be construed as a large, decentralized sociotechnical ensemble. To the extent that this ensemble exhibits obduracy, the PIs expect that the built environment offers up myriad opportunities for getting stuck. To test a number of hypotheses that arise from this premise, the PIs will investigate a set of decisions that currently face a major metropolitan area: the proposed BeltLine in Atlanta, Georgia. The BeltLine is an ambitious plan for a transit corridor, parks, and new development along a ring of disused railroad tracks around downtown and midtown Atlanta. If it is completed as planned, the BeltLine would represent a major shift in the structure and future development of Atlanta as a built environment. The research will proceed in four phases: 1) archival research on the BeltLine proposal and the debate it has generated; 2) review and analysis of existing transcripts of semi-structured interviews conducted by the PI in 2003 as part of a related project; 3) new semi-structured interviews with residents of the Atlanta region; and 4) an online survey informed by the results of the previous phases. The PIs will consider in particular whether and to what extent people are stuck in their thinking about the BeltLine, and whether and to what extent these varieties of stuckness may be attributable to the obduracy or resistance of the existing sociotechnical infrastructure of Atlanta. The research draws from the literatures of several conventional disciplines (philosophy, economics, and technology studies, with some contributions from urban planning, moral psychology, and environmental psychology) to shed new light on a serious practical problem: the difficulty of thinking and acting ethically in complex situations. The research will make three distinct contributions to a growing movement in environmental ethics toward what is called a phenomenology of moral experience: 1) some account of whether and why it may be difficult to think and act ethically; 2) an extension of environmental ethics into the sociotechnical environment, where people actually live; and 3) empirical research into how people experience their various situations and prospects. The research will be useful to three overlapping audiences: 1) scholars in environmental philosophy, urban planning, technology studies, and related fields; 2) those involved directly in the decision about the BeltLine in Atlanta, including planners, policy makers, developers, and residents; 3) people in other metropolitan areas who are facing similar decisions. Accordingly, the research results will be disseminated through the popular press and through websites accessible to a broad public as well as through academic journals and conferences. In addition, the results of this research will influence the senior personnel's teaching in environmental ethics, economics, and policy.