Abstract

The purpose of this project is to outline an environmental ethic for metropolitan environments. I argue that philosophers have not adequately acknowledged the role that populated places play in their theoretical projects. The ethical, social, economic, legal, and political characteristics of metropolitan areas suggest that a need exists for a separate environmental ethical treatment for these environments. I examine the relationship between environmental values and the possibility of community in metropolitan regions. I locate a minimalist or thin version of community that, given current material realties, can exist in metropolitan settings. What holds these communities together are common interests, which form the basis of metropolitan communities of interest that I argue have the potential to produce shared metropolitan environmental values that can lead to change. I next argue that to be an effective tool for both human and ecological communities, a metropolitan environmental ethic must be guided by a bi-focal vision---one part focused on human communities, one part focused on ecological communities. A goal of flourishing human and ecological communities based on a program of weak environmental sustainability can guide environmental ethics and policy in metropolitan environments. If a metropolitan environmental ethic is going to be effective, it must account for the often-uneasy connection between environmental quality and economic development. I outline a model wherein social concerns "piggyback" on environmental concerns, and vice versa. By combining the two as interdependent parts of the same project, we can begin to move toward metropolitan environmental policy able to avoid the specter of gentrification. A metropolitan environmental ethic, taken alone, only leaves us, at best, with several autonomous metropolitan regions. I thus conclude by extending the insights of a metropolitan environmental ethic outward by highlighting the various political, social, economic, and ecological connections that exists first between metropolitan regions, and between metropolitan regions and non-metropolitan regions