What is the point of urban justice? Access to human space

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 justice-related issues of contemporary cities, namely, segregation and gentrification.