Reason in the City of Difference: Pragmatism, Communicative Action and Contemporary Urbanism

In the modernist city rationality ruled and subsumed difference in a logic of identity. In the postmodern city, reason is abandoned for an endless play of difference. Reason in the City of Difference poses an alternative to these extremes by drawing on classical American philosophical pragmatism (and its contemporary developments in feminism and the philosophy of communication) to explore the possibilities of a strengthening and deepening of reason in the contemporary city. This is a transactional rationality based on communication, rather than cognition, involving bodies as much as minds, and non-discursive, as well as discursive competences. It is a rationality that emerges out of difference and from within the city, rather than over and above it.

Using pragmatist philosophy and a range of suggestive examples of urban scholarship, this fascinating book offers a new, alternative reading of the city.