At the scale of urbanism, applied architectural inquiry contends with a researcher’s catch-22: the volatility and complexity of cities demand active investigation that in turn makes it impossible to isolate or fully preempt the unintended side effects of one’s work. The urgency of urban problems is so great that we must act despite what cannot be modeled or forecast; we must simultaneously conduct and apply research without the benefit of verifiable conclusions drawn in advance. Yet even our best knowledge cannot anticipate the consequences of our actions. As a result, applied research in urbanism has become a form of active design practice—one that balances science with art and demands the same nuanced sensitivity to a future not yet written that is inherent in other modes of architectural intervention.

The definition of applied urban research as design practice presents a new set of conundrums in execution. Urbanists practice in public. Our research is enacted upon cities rather than conducted within a lab, our assertions are deployed as propositions rather than tested as hypotheses, and our successes and failures are felt by potentially millions of humans, most of whom never give consent as research participants. These ethical conundrums are raised from questions of authority and authorization, participation and choice, vulnerability, justice, and social externality. It is this definition of urbanism coupled with both the urgency and complexity of the need for such practice that has thus far exempted urbanists from most existing forms of ethical oversight. Instead, the work operates in an institutional interstice not immediately subject to the protocols of academic research on human subjects nor governed by codes of professional conduct.

This paper calls for a reintroduction of the field of ethics into architecture and urban praxis. The argument outlined here will touch upon a few key themes that may enable urbanists to develop an appropriate set of applied ethics and motivate the field toward an ongoing discursive approach to a working ethical agenda. Toward this discussion, we must first establish two working premises: (1) the city is not a lab, and (2) urbanism is not an experiment. We shall not hold these premises axiomatically, as investigating their basis and value can carve out ethical questions facing practicing urbanists operating in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world.