Stewardship and Ethics

Ethics and development do not always go hand in hand. While ethics is typically used to refer to how we treat each other in terms of interpersonal relationships, ethics in development refers to how the things we create benefit or hurt the world around them.

Every assignment that we complete comes down to one final idea, is the end product financially feasible. There is no doubt that construction and development are driven by the potential of profit. The assignment above was my first introduction into the idea that ethics should also be a large part of the development process. As I wrote this review for Urban Design and the Bottom Line: Optimizing the Return on Perception, I began to realize that the potential social or environmental benefits of a project may be just as important as the financial ones. It also made me aware that these things don't just happen. It will be up to the future working class of my peers and myself to implement these ideas into the spaces we create.