VOLUNTARY URBANISM: THE AGENCY OF THE CITY

Does an imperative for action exist today in urbanism? The emerging paradigm called “agency” refers to a simple matter of voluntary will. Nonetheless, the actors and subjects of such actions are complex, so that understanding them demands that we consider a variety of concepts. In western culture, philosophers considered agency (defined by the field of action) as by circumscribing human free will. In Ancient Greece and the Middle Ages, thinkers such as Aristotle and Aquinas made important contributions to philosophy centered on voluntary action. Conceptualizing modernity, writers like Giddens and Habermas focused on human action as rational order. Postmodern authors such as Deleuze and Badiou introduced concepts like cause, event and desire. In today's altermodernity, contemporary writers like Žižek, Hardt and Negri emphasize the uncertain human drive based in the power to act – being, loving, trusting, transforming, and creating. If modernity and postmodernity claimed freedom of thought and expression, respectively, the current alter-modernity claims freedom of action. Thus, in contemporary theory, agency (the voluntary act) finally emerges as an historical actor. Agree that the design of an assemblage is generally complex. Since then the term expresses agency's ability to act in an entity or person in the world, which means “the temporal-relational context of action.” But the action tout court is by nature an operative and interventional role: “to be able to “act other-wise” means being able to intervene in the world.”