What is the point of urban justice? Access to human space
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What is the point of urban justice? Access to human space Bart van Leeuwen1
© Springer Nature Limited 2020
Abstract Do we need a theory of urban justice? If so, what desiderata would such a theory have to meet? This paper makes a programmatic point, namely, that urban justice is a field of political philosophy in its own right, and that the recognition-theoretical approach is capable of expressing what is at stake there. A revised version of Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition meets the three desiderata of a theory of urban justice: relationality, spatiality and diversity. Whereas justice-related questions on the domestic level typically refer to the basic structure of society—concerning issues of basic rights and wealth distribution—on the city level such questions are concentrated mainly on the way urban space is organized. Ultimately, what is at stake is to articulate a vision of the city as an embodiment of human space; a space that is structured in such a way that it meets the demands for recognition. The paper tests if the framework is capable of expressing the key moral challenges of two justicerelated issues of contemporary cities, namely, segregation and gentrification. Keywords Justice · City · Recognition · Segregation · Gentrification
Introduction For some time now, the philosophical reflection on the meaning of social justice has broadened its scope from the domestic realm to the global realm. Global justice theory is timely, given the process of neoliberal globalization, a widening of the global income gap and the fact that political philosophy traditionally has been focusing on the nation-state. However, the process of globalization also developed into a different direction: it went hand in hand with devolution, urbanization and the formation of megalopolises. This development raises the question if social justice theory should also pay more attention to a societal unit very different from the global or the national, one that is much closer to our life worlds, namely the city. * Bart van Leeuwen [email protected] 1
Political Science, Political Theory, Radboud University, Institute for Management Research, Heyendaalseweg 141, PO Box 9108, 6525 AJ Nijmegen, The Netherlands Vol.:(0123456789)
B. van Leeuwen
Modern cities are plagued by a number of problems that seem to indicate the need for thorough normative evaluation, such as neoliberal-capitalist displacement and dispossession, gentrification, a reliance on market processes and an obsession with economic growth, the disregarding of the rights of homeless people, lack of citizen input, lack of tax base sharing, lack of affordable housing, lack of public services in certain quarters, social and ethnic segregation and so on (Brenner et al. 2012; Dikeç 2007; Fainstein 2010; Harvey 1973, 2009; Marcuse et al. 2009; Mitchell 2003; Soja 2010). These well-known challenges suggest that “the city” is indeed a relevant unit of analysis for social justice. The main question that I want to explore is how these normative challenges should be frame
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