Civic Virtue By Design

published Sep 7, 2007
Civic Virtue By Design
In his earth day address, Mayor Bloomberg laid out PlaNYC a series of highly practical steps to improve our city in a period of rapid population growth against a backdrop of global warming.

He outlined 127 programs that would work together to support an urban policy that would result in a city not just coping, but improving, through challenging times.

The programs are diverse and technical, ranging from tree canopy guidelines to mass transit financing.

However, if we step back a moment, we will recognize something else profoundly important in this speech: a new definition of civic virtue for the 21st century.

Civic virtue is the cultivation of habits important for the success of the community.

The ideas Mayor Bloomberg laid out are nothing short of a new compact with nature for the urban dweller, an acknowledgment that the success of our city will in large part be determined by our success in managing our environment.

What shape will these civic virtues take? In previous centuries, we learned to express civic virtue through architecture.

Will we, like the Greeks before us, invent an architecture that encapsulates these virtues as we build our city to accommodate a million more New Yorkers?

The Greeks may not have invented civic virtue, but they certainly branded the idea with architecture.