The just city

Abstract

Justice has always been a major topic within political philosophy, but scholars in the behavioural sciences have largely avoided normative statements. After the urban uprisings of the 1960s and 1970s, however, leftist scholars adopted a critical approach that, while not specifying a concept of justice, injected a moral dimension into their work. Within urban studies, the argument of Henri Lefebvre, who defined space as a social construction and who maintained that all groups should have a ‘right to the city’, became particularly influential. During the 1990s, scholars began to be more explicit about the concept of justice. Three main approaches to urban justice were developed: (1) communicative rationality; (2) recognition of diversity; (3) the just city/spatial justice. Differences between the communicative and just city approaches revolved around emphasis on democracy versus equity, process versus outcome. I argue that democracy, diversity, and equity are the three governing principles for urban justice but also recognize the tension among them. Although structural transformation cannot be achieved at the municipal level, a change in the rhetoric around urban policy from a focus on competitiveness to a discourse about justice can improve the quality of life for urban residents.

Keywords:

• just city
• urban theory
• planning theory
• right to the city
• spatial justice

Notes

1. See Saunders (1986) for an incisive analysis of the early work of Castells and Harvey.

2. As will be discussed later, proponents of communicative rationality and deliberative democracy expect that genuinely democratic processes will result in just outcomes. They, therefore, focus on processes of participation and methods of negotiation rather than the content of policy or the character of the desirable city (Fainstein, 2005).

3. A few planning scholars have specified progressive institutions and policies, although they have typically not placed their recommendations within a broader theoretical context (Clavel, 1986; Mier, 1993). In a 1993 article in the North Carolina Law Review, which I co-authored with Ann Markusen, we attempted to specify particular urban programmes that would increase social justice. Leonie Sandercock in her two books Toward Cosmopolis (1998) and Cosmopolis II (2003) has sought to spell out the characteristics of a city responsive to difference. Gutmann and Thompson (1996), who attempt to provide substantive content to deliberative democracy, apply principles of deliberative democracy to such specific policy areas as health care and earnings, which intersect with urban issues; however, they do not adopt a specifically urban perspective.

4. Shapiro (1999) goes even farther in ascribing a substantive content to democracy, arguing that participation is valuable but nevertheless a subordinate good to justice, which he defines as overcoming domination.

5. See Benhabib (2002, pp. 49–81) for a discussion of the origins, meaning, and contradictions of the concept of recognition.

6. Rousseau, however, rather than opting for cultural pluralism, considered that genuine democracy could only exist within small communities of like-minded people.

7. The critique applies partially to Habermas, whose concept of intersubjectivity is consonant with the views of these critics but whose emphasis on rationality in discourse is at odds with them.

8. Dahrendorf (1959) similarly argues the inevitability of hierarchies of power and social differentiation.

9. This criticism was most strongly expressed by Weber (1958) in ‘Politics as a Vocation’, when he contrasted the ethic of responsibility with the ethic of absolute ends.