From mere urbanity to urban bioethical standards

An interest in research, deliberation, and reflection on urbanity has been present for a long time. Due to rapid urbanisation in the last few decades, such interest has intensified, attracting scholars from different disciplines and creating new platforms for discussion. The first indicators of a ‘bioethical’ interest in urban life are already present in Van Rensselaer Potter’s early papers (urban ethics. However, more extensive research into urban bioethics remained on hold until recently, mainly due to the dominance of the biomedical paradigm within modern mainstream bioethics. In 2017, the European Bioethics in Action project (funded by the Croatian Science Foundation) ended, resulting in a list of general bioethical standards related to animals, plants, and human health. The aim of this paper is to present the rationale for developing bioethical standards in a specific urban context.

Urban bioethics – The architect of a healthy city

Urban bioethics pays attention to the design of healthy relationships through the involvement of citizens. The main characteristics of urban bioethics: inclusion, integrity, transdisciplinarity. Involvement is a relentless engaging scriptwriter that is deployed by urban bioethics to explore the everyday application of its principles. Integrity discloses integrative mechanisms for bringing communities together in order to create a development strategy for the city and society in general. Transdisciplinarity explains the mechanism of transcendental space, bringing together a variety of languages, professions, cultures, and etcetera. In this article, we go into examples of bioethical practices that promote the development and implementation of intercultural strategies on an Integrated Bioethics Platform, which can be found in the city both - online and offline. We also make suggestions on the leading types of behavior that are indoctrinated by this platform: networking; involvement through art; awareness of public space and one’s place/one’s self; educational practices.

Space and ethos

The article examines the inextricable conceptual connection of space and ethos with culture and citizenship. It claims that the city is a prominent space for deploying citizens’ codes of conduct, taking into account the particularities of all groups. It also suggests ways of academic activities, like the introduction of bioethical principles in schooling of the young parts of the population, in the education of a new generation of building industry professionals, and the underline of the role of bioethics in understanding the interactions between the built environment and health, human well-being, productivity, energy use and climate change. The article contains several urban space snapshots in order to illustrate the phenomena and it also refers to Thessaloniki, a Northern Greece city, mentioning the conduct of inhabitants or, works of the authorities, who viciously offend city’s memory traces and culture. Finally, it suggests a list of ten points in order to develop our understanding why Space and Ethos are inextricably and culturally bound as a basic bi-pole of Urban Bioethics and thus promote supranational standards of European citizenship. These ten points are certainly relevant and useful to the discussion of the topic, but vary in depth and domain.

The urban ethics of an AI-powered planetary urbanization

By 2100, the world may be entirely urbanized with every person living in cities. This imminent reality of planetary urbanization is likely to entail drastic environmental, economic, and social changes, all of which in turn are likely to impact the nature of human relations and their interactions in cities. Urban ethics is, therefore, concerned with the question of what ought to be the proper relations between people flourishing in the city? This question is presently compounded by the rise of the ‘smarter smart cities’, where urban technologies are enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) that can sense, track, learn, predict, and attempt to control human behaviors. The rapid confluence of these three developments, namely, planetary urbanization, urban ethics, and the AI-powered smart city, reveals an under-explored scenario pregnant with new social promises yet laced with many moral hazards. In this article, the following scenario, which is bounded by the following three vectors, will be examined: (i) How does the urban shape the ethical, and in what ways? (ii) What is the AI-powered smart city, and how does it impact the present notion of planetary urbanization? (iii) How does the AI-powered smart city change ethical agencies and in which specific ways? Together, the answers to these questions begin to further prime discussions in urban bioethics in the milieu of AI-powered cities.

Interview with Associate Professor of Rijeka University Iva Rinčić

Interview with associate professor Iva Rincic feels like meeting a close-minded person on a very long journey. Meet and feel that you are “on the same page”. What is urban bioethics? How is it different from bioethics in general? What is this “Project on Bioethical Urban Life Standards: The City as the Basis for Ethics Life”? – are the main points laid down in the conversation. So, during the interview, you will find out that despite the fact that bioethics is perceived as a modern version of biomedical ethics, originally it covers a much wider area of ​​interest. Bioethics implies moral obligations of people not only to each other, but also to everything living (animals and plants) (F. Jahr (1926)). This is the science of survival (V. R. Potter (1971)). If we see bioethics in this way, then urban life is necessary as a (bio) ethical object, purpose and scope, and "the city as a living creature that is constantly growing and transforming." Within the framework of the project the main goal is to create a list of urban bioethics standards. In order to activate the mechanism of urban bioethics, Iva talks about such valuable characteristics of local people as Responsibility, Committment, Awareness, Trust, Belonging. The project “European Bioethics in Action” fed into the list of bioethical standards. Iva Rincic also presented a list of 97 standards that determine relationships between animals, plants, people and environment. Further this list will be simplified for residents of the city. Iva wants all citizens to be included in these lists. She is also sure that this is the only way to have a rather bright tool to achieve bioethical city in the future.

Bioethical Debate, Reflections and Standards. Urban Bioethics spotlight

The process of creation of a new direction in bioethics - urban - is extremely important in the global world. Ukraine, as a post-socialist country, is a perspective field for urban researches. On the one side, it has a bright, specific culture, and on the other, the “invisible” citizens, whose voices remain unheard during the transformational modern conversions. Participation in the conference on May 17-18, in Rijeka, is an opportunity to study the experience of different countries, different economic systems, etc. to increase attention and understanding of the cultural and value context on the example of the particular urban cases. The analysis of the conference does not pretend to enlighten the contents of the conference comprehensively, but rather to highlight the own impression of participation and to encourage discourse in the field of new bioethics direction.

Urban Bioethics Plan: Studies for the Conscious Citizen

The analysis of urban bioethics in the article is carried out through urban practices. In turn, through such life practices there is an awareness of bioethics in general. Three main characteristics of urban bioethics are being revealed – Inclusion, Integration and Transdisciplinarity. Inclusion is a restless screenwriter of “inclusion” of citizens, where urban bioethics explores the experience of using the principles of bioethics in everyday life. Integration reveals integrative mechanisms for uniting communities to develop a strategy for the development of a city and society as a whole. Transdisciplinarity explains the mechanism of the transcendent space, combining the diversity of languages, specialties, cultures and the like. The urban bioethics plan aims at discussing civic thought in solving problems including both a bioethical nature and an urban context. Which forum is better for such discussions? We offer InplatBio - an integrative bioethics platform that has online and offline life in the city. The most promising theories for debates on bioethics are the ones that call upon citizens or officials to justify any requirements for collective action, giving reasons that may be acceptable to those who are connected by action. This concept has become known as deliberative democracy. InplatBio is an involvement of conscious citizens to work together in the community, for an ongoing, general, thoughtful and competent discussion of problems and their joint solution.

Urban Bioethics: A Call for the Prestige

Many teaching hospitals in the United States were founded on philanthropic principles and aimed to aid the urban poor and underserved. However, as times have changed, there has been a divide created between the urban poor and teaching hospitals. There is a plethora of reasons why this is the case. This paper will specifically focus on the histories of ten hospitals and medical schools and the effect that white flight, segregation, elitism, and marginalization had on healthcare institutions all over the United States. It will call for a reexamination of the values of Ivy League and Ivy Plus teaching hospitals and medical schools and for them to take an intentional look into their communities.