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Berry
2005
). Instead of arguing for efforts to alter the situation at the national scale,
as seen in most welfare policies, these authors, and especially proponents of the
emerging Just City approach (Fainstein
2010
; Marcuse et al.
2009
) and Harvey's
(
1973
,
2013
) more radical ideas, have stressed that social justice should be deliv-
ered at the urban scale. This focus seems obvious. Urban places contain the majority
of people in the developed world and are the centres of consumption, exchange and
production, while their governments control the development decisions that affect
the location and renewal of buildings, land use policy and the delivery of many ser-
vices. But in addition, pressure for change in society has come from the increasing
numbers of protest movements, which are also primarily situated in urban places.
These protests, urban social justice topics, and the many articles using the term, Just
City, are not simply descriptive of the problems of the disadvantaged—issues that
have already spawned a vast literature—or of the many redistributive efforts at the
national state scale. Rather, the emerging Just City advocates wish to create a broad
normative framework of ideas on how this concept can be developed, not only to
address the problems of the poorest people, but also to relate more broadly to those
with unequal access, influence and opportunity in an urban context. In addition
the idea needs to be extended to those with different lifestyles, whose hope for the
ability to live openly has usually been squashed by ill-liberal, repressive laws. The
term Emancipatory City was used by Lees (
2004
) as the title for a set of pioneering
essays to explore the way in which cities and the attitudes and life-styles within
them, can be centres of release from societal restrictions, something hoped for over
centuries. Although this goal can be linked to problems of economic disadvantage,
it also applies to the degree to which people with diverse orientations, not only gays
and lesbians, but many other groups, can live freely, without prejudice and are able
to find new opportunities in urban places (Roszak
1969
). Hence issues such as a
tolerance for diversity, not just reducing inequalities, should also be seen as part of
the progress towards more just cities. However one of the problems of focusing on
the urban scale is that the powers of most towns and cities are actually quite limited;
it is the state that still exercises the major controls in creating laws and conditions
in society that discriminate against many people.
A key element in this new approach to redistributive justice is a return to the use
of values as a rationale for reducing the perceived injustices, especially the concep-
tion of 'fairness' in redistributive justice, as a fundamental principle justifying inter-
vention. This was promoted by the philosopher Rawls (
1971
) in his path-breaking
work
Theory of Justice
, which lies behind the quotation from Fainstein used at the
beginning of this essay. It argues for using justice, not simply competitiveness—and
one could add maximization of profit or returns from development—as a basis for
urban policy making. This chapter summarizes the background to the development
of the Just City approach, as well as its emerging elements and problems. Since
the idea of redistributive justice at an urban scale has a heritage as far back as the
classical Greek city-states, it does seem appropriate to set the discussion within a
broad historical context to provide a background to the current debates.
