Issues which the lecture addresses

The social sustainability of urban development solutions is often overlooked in favour of economic and/or environmental sustainability. This lecture brings together two areas of study that are generally separate: sustainability and socio-spatial justice. It does so by using Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons to illustrate the issues at hand, especially issues of justice, redistribution, and most specially, democracy and participation in decision making. It does so by using literature by Elinor Ostrom, Susan Fainstein and Patsu Healey on the communicative turn in planning.

Short analysis of the above issues

The tragedy of the commons unveils crucial environmental and social impacts of the rational pursuit of self-interest by economic actors, and exposes the tragedy of resource exhaustion if self-interest is pursued mindlessly and free of societal control. It also reveals the challenges surrounding the just redistribution of the fruits of human activity, and how this redistribution is decided. These challenges are discussed through the lenses of Ostrom’s theories on the governance of the commons and Fainstein’s propositions on the just city. These two authors are used here to illuminate how the injustices built into the tragedy of the commons can and are customarily solved through communicative rationality and public justification. Finally, Healey’s ideas on the communicative turn in spatial planning are brought in to bridge Ostrom’s and Fainstein’s ideas into spatial planning theory. It concludes by stating that despite the obvious challenges presented by powerful interests overriding the conditions for spatial justice in the city, there is still great potential in systems of public justification and reasoning to pursue just outcomes in the distribution of spatial benefits and burdens of urban development.

Propositions for addressing the issue

1. Introduction of the Tragedy of the Commons
2. Introduction of a socially sensitive notion of sustainability
3. Discussion on the issue of justice and redistribution of resources and the connection with space and urban development
4. Introduction of the notion of spatial justice as bedrock for social sustainability
5. Discussion on how resources are redistributed (distributive justice) and how this is decided upon (procedural justice) and how these notions can be used by policy makers when designing policy.