The Just City and the Common Good in the Western Tradition

It is often said that we live in the age of the city, and that it is in the city that the battles of inequality, social division, pandemics, and climate change must be fought. But what we call cities in the present does not correspond to what cities were in the past. The institutions, boundaries, and populations that historically defined cities and allowed them to be associated with justice and the common good no longer exist. On the contrary, we are witnessing an unlimited and chaotic process of global urbanization. The city thus becomes an empty and meaningless concept that provides more confusion than clarity in dealing with the problems generated by contemporary global urban life. This chapter will show how the city has been understood in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and we will see that far from being conceived as the ideal model for human life, the city has from its inception had a dark side that is already present in our urbanized societies. It will also be shown that the city in this tradition has a very complex meaning, far beyond the ideal of the good life that Aristotle refers to. On the other hand, the city was also seen as the proper place to live for dependent beings with limited sociability, and that in order to fulfil this limited ideal of the city, it was necessary to have a common good that united the citizens in a common purpose. That seems to be impossible in present-day urbanized societies.