Book Talk | Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City

NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge and the New York Institute for the Humanities invite you to join for a discussion with Richard Sennett on his latest book, Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City.

In Building and Dwelling, Richard Sennett distils a lifetime’s thinking and practical experience to explore the relationship between the good built environment and the good life. He argues for, and describes in rich detail, the idea of an open city, one in which people learn to manage complexity. He shows how the design of cities can enrich or diminish the everyday experience of those who dwell in them.

The book ranges widely – from London, Paris and Barcelona to Shanghai, Mumbai and Medellin in Colombia – and draws on classic thinkers such as Tocqueville, Heidegger, Max Weber, and Walter Benjamin. It also draws on Sennett’s many decades as a practical planner himself, testing what works, what doesn’t, and why. He shows what works ethically is often the most practical solution for cities’ problems.

Richard Sennett is currently a Senior Fellow of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University. Sennett’s scholarly writing centers on the development of cities, the nature of work in modern society, and the sociology of culture. He has authored numerous books and articles, including The Corrosion of Character, The Fall of Public Man, and The Hidden Injuries of Class.