The Polis and the Natural Law

Today, at Notre Dame's workshop series, my colleague in the Architecture Department, Philip Bess, gave a fascinating presentation, "The Polis and the Natural Law:  The Moral Authority of the Urban Transect."  Although my wife, Nicole Stelle Garnett, is the property guru in our house, I have a longstanding interest in -- or maybe a wary attraction to -- the "New Urbanism".  (Or, maybe just "urbanism."  After all, I'm not sure Jane Jacobs needs updating.)  And, we have had many discussions on cities, suburbs, planning, and religion here at Mirror of Justice.  (For example, here, here, and here).

Bess pushed a few buttons by taking the urbanism / smart-growth discussion beyond aesthetics (e.g., "Annapolis looks nicer than Tyson's Corner") and NIMBY-ism, and pulling out the big natural-law-morality guns.  Here's his introduction:

The Aristotelian-Thomist intellectual tradition’s understanding of natural law---which is the broad pre-modern tradition of western culture---is that there are certain foundational principles of morality that are (according to Thomas Aquinas) “the same for all, both as to knowledge and to rectitude”---in other words, principles of morality that are not only right for all human beings but knowable (and at some level known) to all human beings. These foundational principles of morality, along with their first few rings of implications, are known as the natural law.

The Urban Transect refers to that range of human habitats conducive to human flourishing within which human settlements are part of a sustainable (albeit not necessarily locally bio-diverse) eco-system. These habitats, diagrammatically depicted as Transect-zones (“Tzones”), range from less dense human settlements to more dense human settlements; but each urban T-zone denotes a walkable and mixed-use human environment wherein within each urban zone many if not most of the necessities and activities of daily life are within a five-to-ten-minute walk for persons of all ages and economic classes.

It is the thesis of this paper that, given this understanding and characterization of both natural law and the Urban Transect, the proposition “Human beings should make settlements in accordance with the Urban Transect” is generally valid for all human beings in all times and places---and therefore constitutes a natural law precept. If this is true, such a precept would be binding in conscience for---and acted upon with prudential judgment by---all persons who act in accordance with right (practical) reason; and especially for and by persons who understand themselves to be a part of the Aristotelian-Thomist intellectual tradition.

I am inclined to agree with many of the claims associated with this "tradition":  It seems to me that it is meaningful to talk about "human flourishing," and also that there are some ways of arranging "settlements" that are more (or less) conducive to that flourishing.  And, I suppose that governments ought to enact policies and facilitate developments that are conducive to, or consonant with, good arrangements, not bad.  On the other hand, I hesitate a bit about "baptizing" what might be seen by some as just the latest development fad.

So, what do people think?  The claim is (obviously) not that people who live in urban areas (or walkable sub-urban areas) are "better" or more moral than those who live in "sprawl."  It is, though, that there is some strong "ought-ness" behind the claim that our "settlements" should be structured and arranged in a particular way.