Justice and the American city

ASBTRACT

Urban scholars are greatly indebted to Robert Lake, both for his brilliant scholarship and for his decades of editorial service to the Urban Geography journal. Through his longitudinal and interdisciplinary research, Lake has critically explicated the processes of urban governance, planning, and policy making. This brief essay examines Lake’s three key contributions: explicating the role of positivism in geography and urban planning; tracking the historic shifts in state-civil society interactions; and advocating for ‘creative democracy’ and justice as the subject of urban planning. The essay discusses the impacts of Lake’s research on urban scholars and practitioners. The essay concludes that Lake’s reflections on critical democracy must be addressed in the context of ongoing racial injustice and heightened inequalities in American cities.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical democracy
• justice
• inequality
• positivism
• urban planning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).