Theoretical fundamentals of spatial justice

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to generalize the theoretical foundations and directions of the development of spatial justice. The importance and urgency of the issue is due to the strengthening of spatial inequality of economic development and social inequality in the conditions of market transformation of Ukraine's economy and decentralization of management. The author uses normative and positive approaches to reveal the theoretically desirable and real state of realization of equal opportunities for access to economic resources and public goods. The hermeneutics method is used to clarify the direction of theoretical research and the meaning of produced scientific provisions; the anthropocentric method – to justify the priority of economic interests over fiscal ones and social interests – over economic ones; and a synthesis of historical and logical methods – for a comprehensive presentation of the process of expanding the subject field of the research on spatial justice and the generation of new knowledge. The study has revealed that the theory of spatial justice is interdisciplinary. Theoretical approaches to the interpretation of spatial justice by generalizing the main directions of research within different branches of scientific knowledge, which include social philosophy, economic geography, political economy, and finance theory. The conceptual interrelation and correlation of the categories "social inequality", "social justice", and "spatial justice/injustice" is revealed and the logic of the consideration of spatial justice in land use based on those principal categories is substantiated. Based on the interdisciplinary approach, the limitations of the interpretation of inequality as a function of social hierarchy have been overcome and the role of the territorial dimension in the formation and reproduction of spatial injustice has been revealed.