Spatial justice
Spatial justice is the idea that geography —where one lives, what is near, what is far— produces injustice by itself, and that changing space is therefore a way of doing justice. Edward Soja formulated it in Seeking Spatial Justice (2010) out of the transport struggles of Los Angeles.
It draws on Lefebvre's right to the city and Harvey's critical geography: the city is not the stage of inequality but one of its mechanisms. Spatial justice names what neighbourhood movements ask for when they demand a metro line, a park or a school: not a favour but a redistribution.
Videos on this term (28)
- Housing
Jason Corburn and Street Science: Planning with the Neighbourhood
Jason Corburn proposes in Street Science combining technical knowledge with neighbourhood knowledge to plan healthy…
Jason Corburn 3 min read - Urban ecology
Green Gentrification: When Parks and Trees Push Residents Out
Green gentrification is the paradox of the sustainable city: the park that a neighbourhood fought for raises rents…
3 min read - Urban form
Michael Hibbard: Regional Planning for Social Justice
Michael Hibbard defends a regional and community planning that shares development between city and countryside.…
Michael Hibbard 3 min read - Public space
Latin American Urban Theory: Marcelo Lopes de Souza
Latin American urban theory reads the city through inequality, informality and social struggle.
2 min read - Urban economy
Rebel Cities by David Harvey: Right to the City and Urban Revolution
Rebel Cities (2012) by David Harvey explains that capitalism's crises have urban roots and that the right to the…
David Harvey 3 min read - Public space
Lefebvre: urban space as a field of struggle
In The Production of Space, Lefebvre separates perceived, conceived and lived space, and shows where capital and…
Henri Lefebvre 2 min read - Urban economy
Andy Merrifield: Critique of Neoliberalism and the Right to the City
Andy Merrifield describes the neoliberal city as parasitic and proposes replacing the right to the city with a…
Andy Merrifield 2 min read - Public space
Nicholas Blomley: Property, Space and Spatial Justice in the City
Nicholas Blomley shows that property is a spatial practice deciding who may be where. Unsettling the City, Rights…
Nicholas Blomley 3 min read - Urban geopolitics
Edgar Pieterse: Spatial Justice and Sustainable Cities in Africa
Edgar Pieterse of the African Centre for Cities proposes radical incrementalism for African cities: improving the…
Edgar Pieterse 3 min read - Urban economy
Peter Marcuse: Social Justice and Urbanism Against Neoliberalism
Peter Marcuse explained how neoliberalism put planning at the service of capital and what a just city requires.…
Peter Marcuse 2 min read - Public space
Henri Lefebvre: urban space as a social product
Henri Lefebvre showed that urban space is not a neutral setting: it is socially produced, and whoever produces it…
Henri Lefebvre 3 min read - Public space
Setha Low: Spatial Justice and the Right to Public Space
Setha Low studies what makes a public space just or exclusionary. Her ethnographies of plazas, parks and gated…
Setha Low 3 min read - Urban ecology
Karen Bakker: Why Water Privatisation Failed in Cities
Karen Bakker showed that water is an uncooperative commodity and that neither privatisation nor bureaucracy solves…
Karen Bakker 3 min read - Urban geopolitics
Henri Lefebvre: The Urban Revolution as a Global Process
In The Urban Revolution (1970) Henri Lefebvre argues that urbanisation overflows the city and becomes a global…
Henri Lefebvre 2 min read - Urban economy
Land Policy: Power, Value Capture and Spatial Justice
Land policy decides who gains from urban growth. What it is, how Edward Soja links it to spatial justice and which…
2 min read - Public space
Women and Cities: Advances and Gaps in Urban Research
A review of 275 articles from 1977 to 2019 shows what urban research knows about women and cities and what it…
2 min read - Urban economy
David Harvey: the right to the city under neoliberalism
David Harvey explains how neoliberalism turned housing into a commodity, and why the right to the city means…
David Harvey 3 min read - Public space
Setha Low and Don Mitchell: The Politics of Public Space
The politics of public space decides who may be in the plaza. What Setha Low shows in On the Plaza and Don Mitchell…
Setha Low 3 min read - Urban history
Haussmann's Paris and Capitalist Modernization: David Harvey
The Haussmannization of Paris (1853-1870) built boulevards, displaced workers and absorbed surplus capital.
David Harvey 2 min read - Public space
Interstitial Spaces: Resistance and Creativity in the City's Gaps
Interstitial spaces, vacant lots, warehouses and motorway undersides, are where the city reinvents itself.
3 min read - Urban ecology
Jennifer Wolch: Environmental Justice and Green Planning
Jennifer Wolch measured park poverty in Los Angeles and formulated the urban green paradox: the park that corrects…
Jennifer Wolch 2 min read - Public space
Edward Soja and Spatial Justice: The City After Chicago
Edward Soja defined spatial justice: geography produces injustice and changing space is doing justice.…
Edward Soja 2 min read - Public space
Margit Mayer and the Struggle for the Right to the City
Margit Mayer explains how urban movements win the right to the city and how neoliberalism co-opts them with mottos…
Margit Mayer 3 min read - Urban ecology
Right to Water and Environmental Justice: Swyngedouw and Davis
The right to water, recognised by the UN in 2010, is contested in the city. What Erik Swyngedouw and Mike Davis…
3 min read - Public space
Spatial justice: what it is, after Soja and Fainstein
What spatial justice is and how Edward Soja (Seeking Spatial Justice) and Susan Fainstein (The Just City)…
2 min read - Public space
Urban Space and Power: Foucault, Massey and Soja Explained
Urban space is an instrument of power and a field of resistance. What Foucault's panopticon, Massey's power…
2 min read - Public space
The Right to the City: Lefebvre, Harvey and Marcuse Explained
The right to the city, formulated by Henri Lefebvre in 1968, is the right to decide how the city is produced.
3 min read - Urban AI
The Right to the Smart City: Who Benefits from Digital Cities?
The Right to the Smart City, edited by Cardullo, Di Feliciantonio and Kitchin, carries Lefebvre's right to the city…
3 min read
