Ben Davy, University of Johannesburg | 2021 Jammal International Fellow

Tuesday, March 30, 2021
12 pm - 1:30 pm (EST)

AIA continuing education approved (1 LU)
AICP credits available (1.5 CM), Event #9211682

L'Allegoria ed Effetti del Buono e del Cattivo Governo – the Allegory of Good and Bad Government – is a series of three fresco panels painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti between February 1338 and May 1339. The paintings are located in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico and were supposed to remind the members of the city council to the key values of urban governance: hope, generosity, self-restraint, justice. What happened to this clarity and simplicity seven centuries later? Contemporary cities must be sustainable, resilient, carbon-free, and ‘smart’. Another type of narrative examines the ‘just city’ (Fainstein, 2010; Soja, 2010). Are these labels empty signifiers?

Upton (2005: 145) notices the ‘unexposed but hugely significant clashing of values in English planning policy’. But apart from few exceptions (Thomas, 1994), little is done to examine planning values as substantial foundation of planning. Rather, planning values and goals are used randomly and oppor- tunistically. Planners’ language sometimes seem to come from ‘buzzword bingo’. Take, for example this statement about food planning: ‘Feeding the city in a sustainable fashion — that is to say, in [a] way that is economically efficient, socially just and ecologically sound — is one of the quintessential challenges of the twenty-first century ...’ (Morgan, 2009: 347). Could this not also be said about transport planning, housing, climate action, or the siting of waste management facilities?

Benjamin Davy shares his current research interests:

"Currently, I'm working on two topics. One is human dignity, transitional justice, and land reform. I am particularly interested in the current debate in South Africa on expropriation without compensation. Since market-oriented land reform did not yield satisfying results, several stakeholders demand that private land be expropriated for purposes of land reform. Since the Apartheid regime took this land from its former owners without compensation, the argument goes, its return does not require compensation of the present owner. The other topic is land use ethics. Based on Aldo Leopold's famous text "A Sand County Almanac", I am considering the moral consequences of thinking like a mountain, like a tree, like a river, like non-human animals. If mountains or trees or cattle were admitted to a Rawlsian constitutional assembly behind the "veil of ignorance", what would the result be? Presently, however, only Amazon and Unilever are admitted ... with horrible results for the environment.

In 2019, I retired as a professor of land policy, land management, and municipal geoinformation at the School of Spatial Planning, TU Dortmund University (Germany), one of AESOP’s founding member schools. Currently, I am (online) visiting professor to the Faculty of Law, University of Johannesburg, and (online) visiting professor to the School of Architecture and Spatial Planning, TU Wien University (Austria)."