Susan Fainstein's Just City: Equity, Diversity and Democracy

The just city is the criterion that the political scientist Susan Fainstein, professor at Harvard and previously at Columbia, proposes in The Just City (2010) for evaluating urban policy: a decision is good not because it increases growth or efficiency but because it makes the city more equitable, more diverse and more democratic. Fainstein writes against two traditions. Against the entrepreneurial urbanism that measures success by investment attracted, she demands that outcomes be judged by who wins and who loses. Against the communicative planning that trusts the participatory process, she warns that a good process can produce unjust results, and that what matters is the outcome.

Equity, diversity and democracy: Fainstein's three criteria

The book starts from political philosophy. From John Rawls it takes the idea that a just society is one that maximises the position of the worst off; from Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, the capabilities approach, according to which justice consists in ensuring that every person can develop a dignified life; from Iris Marion Young, the critique of oppression and the demand for recognition of groups. From those sources it builds three operational criteria. Equity: that the benefits of policies favour those who have least. Diversity: that the city welcomes different groups without segregating them. Democracy: that decisions include those affected.

New York, London and Amsterdam judged by the just city

Fainstein applies those criteria to three cities. New York, with the grand projects of the Bloomberg era, scores high on diversity and low on equity: growth benefited developers and professionals while affordable housing shrank. London, with the regeneration of the Docklands and the Olympic Games, combines considerable public investment with the displacement of communities. Amsterdam is her most just case: a social housing stock that once exceeded half of the total, land in public hands, quality transport and facilities across the whole city, although she warns of the erosion of that model since the 1990s.

Concrete proposals for just planning

From there she draws concrete proposals for planners. That every new housing project include affordable units for the lowest income bracket. That public housing not be demolished without replacement on the same site and a right of return. That forced relocation be a last resort with full compensation. That large projects generate jobs for residents of the affected neighbourhoods. That plans preserve the mix of uses and housing types instead of zoning by income. And that decision-making bodies include community representatives, with the information and resources to participate on equal terms.

The debate with communicative planning

Fainstein's argument against the exclusive emphasis on process is her most debated contribution. She holds that the communicative planning of Healey or Forester, by focusing on the quality of dialogue, leaves no criterion for judging the outcome, and that in unequal contexts consensus usually favours those with more power. Her critics reply that without democratic process there is no legitimacy for imposing criteria of justice, and that Fainstein herself recognises democracy as one of her three values. The debate has enriched planning theory, which today tends to demand both.

The just city has become a reference framework for evaluating urban policy beyond academia. City governments and organisations use its three criteria to review plans, and its defence of equity as the priority when it conflicts with diversity or democracy offers a clear rule in hard decisions. Fainstein does not promise a perfect city but an instrument for asking, before every project, whom it benefits, whom it excludes and who decided. That question, she argues, is the beginning of any urbanism that wants to call itself just.