Just Community Development: Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Urban Justice

Keywords: justice; theory; community development
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 70

Abstract

Justice, equity, and inclusion are growing concerns to scholars of and practitioners in urban places. Academics in urban planning and geography alike have attempted to theorize what justice in the urban context entails. The quintessential example of this is David Harvey’s use of Henri Lefebvre’s ideas of the Right to the City to assert an inalienable right of residents to participate in the processes of city making. Other exemplars include Edward Soja’s theory of spatial justice; John Friedmann’s ideals of human flourishing and multiplicity in his theory of the Good Society; and Susan Fainstein’s conceptualization of democracy, diversity, and equity in her theory of the Just City. However, while there are similarities between these and other theories, a comprehensive understanding of justice still eludes planning and geography scholars, and public and nonprofit practitioners often note that theorizations of justice are too abstract to be implemented in real world community development programs. Thus, a more comprehensive understanding of justice is needed that can be used to guide the creation and inform the evaluation of community development programs. This paper provides an extensive review of the theoretical literature on justice in urban planning and geography to form a more comprehensive theoretical framework and propose new concepts for understanding justice. The end result is a foundation from which further theorization of justice can proceed and an understanding of justice that is easily implemented in community development program formation and evaluation.