This book illustrates how cities possess unique normative identities, referred to as 'ethoses', and how the residents shape and perceive them. The question of identity and which social relations constitute it has been a central topic in philosophy and social science for centuries. While the state played a key role in shaping identity during the 20th century, its influence has waned in recent years due to market pressures, international agreements, migration, and institutions like the IMF, which limit state autonomy, hence its ability to design policies that sustain and enhance particular, national identities. This collection argues that cities are emerging as new sources of identity, possessing their own "ethoses"—distinctive normative characters. The contributors explore this idea through six cities: London, Qingdao, Tokyo, Mumbai, Istanbul, and Amsterdam. Their analysis draws on extensive document research, personal experiences, urban exploration, and interviews with residents from diverse social, ethnic, and gender backgrounds. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

Reading testimonies and diaries of people of ethnic minorities in Amsterdam in the 17^th and 18^th century one cannot but admire Amsterdam for its policies of inclusion, which, actually inspired John Locke when he wrote A Letter Concerning Toleration. And yet, the traumas of the Jews in the Second World War and the Surinamese in the 1970s suggest that this model of inclusion and toleration was unstable and fragile. Indeed, in recent years many Amsterdamers have acknowledged that the city betrayed not only its ethnic minorities but also its own values. The shift in policies of tolerance which characterizes contemporary Amsterdam is interpreted here as a modification of the ethos of tolerance, from tolerance and inclusion based on indifference to tolerance and inclusion based on curiosity. This ethos includes seeing the other as part of one’s own ‘self’, and the ‘self’ as plural, or, as several Amsterdamers told me, ‘hybrid’.

This chapter explores the socio-political dimensions of urban sustainability. Cities play a pivotal role in sustainability, particularly in addressing climate change through mitigation and adaptation strategies and as hubs for progressive, environment-friendly policies. However, cities are also limited in their capacities for environmental governance due to institutional and political constraints and lack of authority to enforce broader changes or implement large-scale initiatives like a ‘green new deal’. Cities’ ‘non-sovereignty’, we argue, is both a strength and a weakness. Thus, while cities are crucial actors in addressing environmental challenges, their efforts must be complemented by state-level and global political system reforms. Ultimately, enhancing cities’ political autonomy is necessary but insufficient. We conceptualise this complexity as the ‘Urbanocene’, suggesting that it is analogous to human agency in this geological epoch. Like humanity, the city has transformative powers, and like human agency in the Anthropocene, these powers are ultimately circumscribed.

When we think about equality in the city, we are very likely to think first of the wide and growing divide between rich and poor, in material terms. Yet when we think more about a 'city of equals' it becomes apparent that how people feel treated by the city and those around them, and whether they can live according to their values, are much more central. Accordingly, combining their own reflections, a multi-disciplinary literature review, and, distinctively, more than 180 interviews in 10 cities in 6 countries, Wolff and de Shalit have derived an account of a city of equals based on the idea that it should give each of its city-zens a secure sense of place or belonging. Four underlying values structure this account. First, access to the goods and services of the city should not be based purely on the market. Second, each person should be able to live a life they find meaningful. Third, there should be diversity and wide social mixing. Fourth, there should be 'non-deferential inclusion': each person should be able to get access to what they are entitled to without being treated as less worthy than others. They should be able to enjoy their rights without bowing and scraping, waiting longer than others, or going through special bureaucratic hurdles. In sum, in a city of equals each person is proud of their city and has the (justified) feeling that their city is proud of (people like) them.

In their important book, Bell and Wang argue that hierarchies are here to stay, and the question moral philosophy should face is which hierarchies are morally condemnable and which are morally justifiable. They convincingly explain that hierarchies that contribute to social functioning and increase human well-being (often even benefitting those on the lower ranking of hierarchies) or hierarchies with a kind of fluid character and consist of mechanisms or rules that enable switching roles can be justified. In my paper, I wish to examine whether, according to their principles, informal and semi-formal hierarchies which are created by the market or by a firm, using an algorithm, can be justified. These hierarchies differ from the ones discussed by Bell and Wang in that they are not part of traditional or legal institutions or relationships. They are actually informal or semi-formal and are often created spontaneously by, or as a result of an aggregation of many individuals' economic exchanges. Sometimes they are publicized formally (e.g., a list of best sellers' authors, or when prizes are awarded) and sometimes they are simply a matter of the wisdom of the crowd. On the one hand hierarchies in markets are meant to (a) inform consumers and producers and (b) create a healthy competition, so, prima facie they help us and increase our well-being. In addition, they are meant to shift over time, as they depend on the quality of the producer and the product and their ability to compete with other, new, e.g., more technologically advanced, products. Therefore, on the face of it, these hierarchies could be justified according to Bell and Wang's theory. Nevertheless, I argue that there are other characteristics of these hierarchies which make them condemnable according to the theory and that the cons outweigh the pros. These are: (1) Market hierarchies are based on category mistakes; (2) Market hierarchies are likely to be deceptive—they might inform consumers but with deceptive and often irrelevant information; (3) Market hierarchies are not genuinely flexible and therefore work against the principle of shifting roles which Bell and Wang put forward.

The transgenerational community is based on moral similarity between contemporary and future people, referring to an ongoing moral deliberation across generations. It justifies obligations of justice towards the not yet born. Prioritarianism gives extra weight to the wellbeing of the least advantaged. I argue that both sentiments are egalitarian, and ask whether there is any tension between them. If we assume economic growth, and/or technological improvements and/or inflation, then prioritarianism prima facie implies that we should prefer to spend any dollar on today’s disadvantaged than on future generations, hence is in tension with the demands of the transgenerational community. Analyzing four ways of meeting this challenge, I argue that the two principles are not in tension.

This paper examines the reciprocal relationship between artists and cities by analyzing how cities influence artists' critical engagement. We hypothesize that a set of specific urban conditions suggests distinct forms of artistic engagement, which we call the artistic spirit of the city. Based on qualitative fieldwork in four cities in Germany and Israel, we explore how cities influence the self-perception, motivation, and practice of the artists who work and live in them. We found that artists are indeed highly influenced by the particular spirit or the intrinsic logic of the city in which they live and work, and they are embedded within the city's particular socio-political and spatial structures, which in turn influence their outlooks and visions as artistic city-zens.

How do critical artists intervene in urban space, and why? This question is explored in an interurban fieldwork study examining artistic interventions in four cities: Hanover and Hamburg in Germany, and Tel Aviv-Jaffa and Jerusalem in Israel. Grounded on a plethora of artistic interventions gathered in these cities, the article proposes a typology based on techniques, goals, sociability degrees and relations to urban space. On the one hand, urban artistic interventions vary from a compensatory improvement of social conditions to a highly political and protest-driven irritation of existing urban power structures and processes. On the other, the discourses behind the different modes of urban artistic intervention reveal similarities, bringing recurring concepts of “art in public space” to the forefront and referring to similar lines of reasoning which guide urban artists in their practice. This article extends the existing literature by offering a typology of artistic interventions in urban space, highlighting the critical agency of urban artists.

In my book, Cities and Immigration, I suggest shifting responsibilities for the integration of immigrants from the state to the city level. The articles in this issue challenge some of my suggestions. I discuss these challenges with regard to three questions: should a city enjoy greater autonomy to decide who, and how many, immigrants should settle within its borders? Should immigrants enjoy local voting rights even before naturalization? And is there a morally preferable model for integrating immigrants into the city?

How does theorizing of fundamental political concepts change when theoretical primacy is accorded to the social and institutional form of the city instead of the state? Given the changing and increasingly central role that cities play in private and social lives, this chapter suggests a reconsideration of the theoretical concepts commonly applied in analyzing cities’ political dynamics and the social relations therein. The overall rationale is that not only do the meanings of fundamental political concepts such as equality, liberty and democracy change over time, but they are also contingent upon the political unit and the institutions analyzed. Consequently, political and legal theory must not only examine the nature and importance of these concepts but principally indicate how they are modified when applied to the city. Thus, this chapter suggests that the time is ripe for scholars to consider the canon of political and legal philosophy vis-à-vis the city