Just Urban Design Scholarship?: Examining Urban Design Theories Through a Justice Lens

Abstract

Urban design is concerned with designing and making urban places. It is influenced and constrained by aesthetic, economic, environmental, political, and social demands, with their attendant implications for justice. Ideas about justice in urban space have developed in critical ways in recent years (Soja 2010; Fainstein 2011; Low and Iverson 2016). Just and unjust practices are contested through urban politics, materialized through spatial practices, including urban design, and become visibly and physically inscribed in space. Our late colleague Edward Soja (2010) argued that justice and space are inextricably linked. Socially produced spaces create structures of unevenly distributed geographical advantages and disadvantages. Because of design's role in envisioning and making these spaces, particular forms of injustice are intertwined and perpetuated or conversely mitigated by urban design.But to what extent are urban design theories centrally concerned with justice in the city? In this chapter, we examine the key theoretical developments in urban design scholarship over the last 120 years to understand this. We identify thirty-one classic books that have influenced and continue to influence built environment processes and outcomes and urban design pedagogy worldwide. We ask: Did the foremost urban design thinkers concern their theories and visions with equity and justice issues? If so, how did they incorporate notions of justice into urban