The Democratic Foundations of the Just City

In an international collaboration of planners, geographers and political scientists from the Universities of Birmingham and Zurich in 2017, we set out to explore the implications of the ideal of ‘the just city’ (Fainstein 2010) for evaluating and guiding urban planning and for identifying its democratic underpinnings by means of a comparative study of three cities across Europe. The scene was nicely set, with Fainstein’s principles for planning seeking to defend and further equity, enhance recognition of diversity, as well as encourage citizen participation against a global tendency towards policies that only benefit the interests of global capital. More generally, Fainstein refers to the capabilities approach, putting individuals’ opportunities with regard to life chances at centre stage. Complicating things, however, are the possible tensions between the dimensions of equity, diversity and democratic participation, leading Fainstein to prioritise the substantial dimensions of equity and diversity over the procedural dimension of democracy. In particular, she considers that participatory arrangements do not per se lead to equitable policies (notin-my-backyard attitudes, resistance to social mixing by homeowner associations, etc.), and participatory planning is therefore valued only as far as it contributes to equity and diversity. Her scepticism about the ability of democratic institutions more broadly to adequately represent various minorities and to forge meaningful coalitions (Fainstein 2010: 29, 52) leads her to direct her book at planners rather than politicians, where planners are to use participatory arrangements to press for egalitarian and inclusive solutions (Fainstein 2010: 173, 181). In this paper, we take Fainstein’s observations as a starting point but depart from her approach in two important ways. First, Fainstein’s planning principles seem to be intended primarily for the evaluation of single upcoming development projects and general social policies rather than for the guidance of citywide plans responding to spatial developments at the scale of the city or city region. Locational choices are already taken as a given, while spatially differential outcomes of general policies are not considered. Accordingly, the planning principles give little advice as to where a planning intervention is actually needed. In our approach, therefore, we take a decidedly spatial perspective, where urban planning primarily responds to citywide patterns of ‘spatial injustice’ (Soja 2009: 3), understood as lasting spatial structures of privilege and disadvantage that are being politically and societally produced and reproduced. Secondly, while sympathetic to Fainstein’s view that recognition of diversity does not preclude the existence of rather homogeneous neighbourhoods, we worry that accepting current concentrations of disadvantaged people in many city regions across the world does not serve their recognition but rather undermines their capabilities in terms of access to education and opportunities to reach advantageous social positions. This is why, in our approach to the just city, we see a strong role of urban planning in not only limiting further segregation, but proactively counteracting the already existing patterns of spatial injustice, positioning ourselves closer to the ‘equity planning’ approach (Krumholz, Forester 1990).1 In the following sections, we will summarise Fainstein’s principles for just city planning, followed by our spatial critique and an alternative framework for planning inspired by Soja, before we turn to key insights from our case studies on the selected domains of housing and urban renewal in the cities of Birmingham, Lyon and Zurich – cities coming from different traditions of planning, housing and local government. While the study also included extensive interviews with key stakeholders in all three cities, we here focus on summarising local efforts in urban renewal and housing policies in the context of ongoing processes of segregation and exclusion. We discuss how housing policies in Birmingham keep reproducing concentrations of deprivation, how Zurich’s reliance on non-profit housing associations limits its capacity to steer social mixing in the neighbourhoods, and how metropolitan efforts for spatial equity in Lyon is enhanced by the institutional setup and planning regulations in France. Against this Dr. Oliver Dlabac Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau, University of Zurich