Abstract
The paper examines some ideas concerning contemporary understanding of cities. Following observations of recent development in architectural world it is possible to assume that main concern of today's architecture is not architecture itself, but the destiny of our cities.
Urban development is today carried mostly by techno optimistic forces, smart technologies, technocratic ideas, or by capitalist economic interests of "The Icon Project" or "Starchitecture." Nothing of this is necessarily wrong, but surely highly problematic and ambivalent. What we need is not yet another technology or more science, unaware of particular people, tradition, context and culture, but clear view of situation and a way out.
Regardless of any scientific novelty and progress we do not know what to do with our cities. Taking it as a point of departure this paper contends an argumentation that it is possible to start understanding our cities as an inheritance from the past.
The paper propounds benefits of doing so. The arguments are drawn from contemporary philosophy (an ethics of inheritance).
Following it the paper explains an ethical notion of an heir and what are the advantages of the notion.