Spatial Justice: A crucial dimension of sustainability

This chapter seeks to describe the concept of spatial justice and to unpack its implications for spatial planning and the role of planners. It addresses spatial justice as a crucial dimension of sustainability, especially of social sustainability. It argues that justice buttresses public reasoning and public justification and therefore reinforces the social and political structures and institutions that allow for sustainability to exist. It argues that spatial planning is one of those socio-political institutions buttressing sustainability. It argues, furthermore, that Justice is a good “internal and necessary for the successful realisation” of spatial planning, without which it is meaningless. It goes on to examine the role of planning as a public reasoning tool and identifies participatory planning as a viable tool to achieve spatial justice.