A crisis of lost values: rediscovering the relationship between urban beauty, democracy and complexity

This chapter focuses on the appreciation and production of ordinary urban environments and investigates the interlink between the crises of democracy and beauty. It delves into this issue by reflecting on three fundamental questions: “Why are the concepts of urban beauty and democracy in crisis?”, “To what extent are the two crises interlinked?”, “What are the main conceptual and practical planning implications?”. After presenting the ongoing struggle with the concepts of democracy and beauty, the chapter discusses how and why these two crises are interlinked and influence each other. It argues that the two crises have a common conceptual root: the refusal of complexity. The chapter suggests that to overcome this impasse, more attention must be paid to (i) certain crucial and widely underrated peculiarities of urban beauty and (ii) certain moral and practical principles that should guide the production of the urban environment. A cultural change is possible, provided that planners recognise the beneficial role of complexity.