How can we find meaning in city life? How can we imbue our lives with a significance that extends beyond the securing of our physical and material well being? This is the question that the philosopher Shane Epting takes up in his latest book, Meaning and the Metropolis: Toward an Urban Existentialism, published in 2024 by Routledge Press. Epting is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Missouri University of Science and technology. He has written extensively on issues related to city life and is the co-founder of the Philosophy of the City Research Group, an international organization of scholars engaged sophisticated philosophical analysis of all things urban. I’m very happy to have in on the podcast. Here is our conversation.

Last week, Mayor Eric Adams delivered his annual State of The City address (apparently it's in a very good state), and so I thought it fitting that we take up the matter here. But rather than take a deep dive into the details and lack thereof of the Mayor’s speech, I wanted to zoom out for a somewhat wider perspective on the condition of the city and some of the issues that it is currently facing. To do so, I invited the New York-based writer Ross Barkan to join me. Ross is not only a prolific writer, but one of tremendous breadth. He is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, authors a weekly political column for Crain’s New York Business, and his work appears frequently in New York, The Atlantic, The Nation, among other outlets. He has authored three books, among them the novel The Night Burns Bright, and a book that Publisher’s Weekly described as "an excoriating takedown" of New York’s former governor entitled The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York. He is the author of a Substack newsletter on New York and national affairs called “Political Currents by Ross Barkan.”

Discussed in this episode:

"The Zeitgeist is Changing. A Strange, Romantic Backlash to the Tech Era Looms" by Ross Barkan

"The Three Segments of American Culture," by Ross Barkan

"26 Empire State Buildings Could Fit Into New York's Empty Office Space. That's a Sign." by Edward L. Glaeser and Carlo Ratti

The long wait is over! Phi on New York is back and hopefully better than ever. The aim, as always, is to bring you conversations that take a philosophical look at the issues and ideas that shape our city and inform our lives within it. For this episode I wanted to take a look at the idea of the right to the city, an idea introduced by the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre in 1968, and enthusiastically adopted by many activists and organizations ever since. My guest for this episode is Margaret Cuonzo, a philosopher at Long Island University in Brooklyn, who recently took up this idea and provocatively argues that to adequately understand any such right that we can claim over the city we need to acknowledge that the city itself has rights that we need to respect. I enjoyed this conversation immensely, and hope you do as well.

Can a city have a soul? And if so, is it something solid and fixed for as long as the city survives, putting its stamp on each new generation? Or is the soul of the city a much more ephemeral thing, a transient spirit of the moment, a metaphorical summation of the prevailing sentiments of its citizens? In this episode, Joseph P. Viteritti, the Thomas Hunter Professor of Public Policy and Chair of the Urban Policy and Planning Department at Hunter College takes me through his search for what he hopes is the enduring soul of New York, a progressive vision of a city that is committed to lifting up the least fortunate of its residents.

Professor Viteritti's webpage

Writings discussed:

"Searching for the Soul of New York: Part 1, Literature"

"Searching for the Soul of New York: Part II, Politics and Leadership"

The Pragmatist: Bill de Blasio's Quest to Save the Soul of New York

Invisible Cities (by Italo Calvino)

Political strategist Bradley Tusk joins the podcast to discuss his philosophy of the city, why he's opening a bookstore and funding the Gotham Book Prize, why he backed Andrew Yang for mayor, what makes for good and bad business regulations, and what he thinks is wrong with our politics and how he proposes to fix it.

Michael Menser (Brooklyn College, CUNY) joins the podcast to discuss how the logic of the city's model of development, use of space, circulation of goods and people, and over-burdened ecology are changing what it means to live in New York and how a more participatory conception of democratic engagement can help us to navigate the challenges to come.

Linda Martín Alcoff joins the podcast to talk to me about the importance of taking seriously Jean Kim's allegations of sexual assault, of not rushing to condemn Scott Stringer, and how the normative tension between the two are of particular concern to the "progressive epistemic community."

In this episode I speak with the philosopher Samantha Noll about the difference between food security, food sovereignty, and food justice while getting also getting a history lesson about food justice issues in New York City. In the second part of the episode I hear from Stephen Grimaldi, the executive director of the New York Common Pantry, as he tells me what it has been like trying to feed the growing numbers of hungry New Yorkers during the pandemic.