Social justice in China’s cities: Urban-rural restructuring and justice-oriented planning

Research on China’s urban planning sector has largely focused on its role in delivering economic growth and state objectives. Yet China’s urban planning practices are producing new forms of social injustice, which few studies explicitly examine. The paper details three types of social injustice stemming from urban planning and urbanization processes: 1) economic disparities related to land and housing dispossession and speculation, 2) dissolution of social networks and relative precarity for rural-to-urban resettlement migrants, and 3) in-situ marginalization for residents excluded from urban planning. It further proposes that these types of social injustice can be addressed through distributional, participatory, and recognition-oriented mechanisms. Centering justice can reconfigure the aims, processes, and outcomes of planning practice, thereby reducing inequalities embedded within China’s urbanization. Without deprioritizing economic growth and state-led entrepreneurialism, however, justice-oriented planning can offer but partial remedies. The conclusion discusses pathways for researchers and planners to contribute to a just planning transition and advance social justice in China’s cities.