Speaker
Description
Many planning theorists agree that justice is one, if not the primary, goal of planning. In planning practice and policymaking, phrases such as “inclusive planning” or “equitable design” also indicate the key role of justice considerations in the planning profession. A normative position towards justice issues is present in every planning task, albeit this stance often remains implicit. Planning theory refers to spatial justice as a notion to capture the spatial component of these justice issues. Arguing for an explicit normative position, my aim is to further the discussion on the philosophical basis of spatial justice, and to develop methods to operationalise such a position. To this end, I make use of the differentiation between the concept and conceptions of justice elaborated by Moroni and De Franco (2024), the concept denoting a general, universal idea of justice and the conceptions denoting various normative positions towards justice issues.
The purpose of this research is to concretise the concept and develop a workable conception of justice to apply to spatial issues. To characterise the concept and define “true” instances of injustice, I build upon Miller’s (2023) four aspects of justice: i) justice as concerning the treatment of individuals, ii) justice as claims rightfully made, iii) justice as impartial, and iv) injustice as caused by human agency. Secondly, I argue for a specific conception of spatial justice that builds on the capability approach and ideas from sufficientarianism and limitarianism. I argue that this conception is not only morally justified, but also practically useful for the planning profession, as it can be operationalised to answer some questions regarding significant spatial issues: for example, regarding the role of space as a condition for granting positive rights (Moroni and De Franco, 2024). To illustrate, I take traffic planning as an example. The planning paradigm of accessibility, which is common in transport studies, denotes the capability to reach destinations and activities. Therefore, accessibility in transport serves as an indicator for injustices regarding the capability to make use of one’s positive rights.
References
Miller, D. (2023) Justice. In Zalta, E. N. and Nodelman, U. (eds.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [Online] available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/
Moroni, Stefano and De Franco, Anita (2024) Spatial Justice: A fundamental or derivative notion? City, Culture and Society, 38: 100593.
| Keywords | spatial justice; capability approach; justice conceptions; normativity in planning |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
