Just Cities: Changing History through Geography

Primarily, Urban Planning has been judged on the criteria of Efficiency and Effectiveness, but in the article,’ Planning and the Just City’ by Susan S. Fainstein, the criterion of equity is introduced and it is argued that the ultimate goal of planners and city managers should be that of a “Just City”.  Just cities can provide the benchmark of the 21^st century cities and maybe we need to have a ‘Just city index’ instead of ‘Livabilty cities index’, to bring the focus of urban planners to this goal. It is well documented that it is the poor who make sacrifices in the urban setting in the name of creating Global cities, Creative cities, whatever is the fad at that period of time, the poor are the most neglected segment in the realm of urban planning. The obsession of the urban planners to create cities with focus on growth and economic development puts the poor and disadvantaged at the margin of development mainly because they don’t have the lobbying power to influence the planning process. It is time that urban planners should also take their share of responsibility for the shrinking middle class and the growth of the rich class, although much of it is due to inherent characteristics of Capitalism. Democracy which was supposed to promote equity has failed miserably to do, in the domain of urban planning, with the ‘property-owning democracy ‘ calling the shots and those who don’t own the property or don’t have tenure rights on the place they live, have no say in the planning process even if they constitute significant numbers. The threat of the global warming and the harmful ecological effects of development has created another objective of ‘Sustainable Development’ for the planners, here also the greatest effect of the ecological damage is going to be borne by the poor and the marginalized.

Growth with Equity and Sustainability

Scott Campbell, in an artcle “Green Cities, Growing Cities,  Just Cities?  Urban Planning and the Contradictions of Sustainable Development”, published in Journal of the American Planning Association (Summer, 1996) argues that planners face three conflicting interests: to grow the economy, distribute this growth fairly, and in the process not degrade the ecosystem.

The urban conflict of land is due to the commodification of land. Shelter one of the basic needs of humans has been converted by greed to Speculation. The competing claims on the ownership of property are inherent in the capitalism, blurring the boundary between private interest and public good. Property is defined as a private commodity but is dependent on government policies like zoning, public housing, etc, to ensure the beneficial aspects of the property, this contradictory nature of property is classified as “property contradiction” by Richard Fogleson(1986).

The Road-Map to Just Cities

Agreed that the goal of urban planning should be creation of Just Cities, but how to go about it?  What are the strategies?  Many cities of the world have followed the path of ‘Creative Destruction’ in which the equity concept was never taken into account and the underlying concept was that the winners will compensate the losers, but history has shown that it is geography that has won in terms of opportunity and a loser in the long run is never able to come to the top inspite of best of the efforts by the governments. The equity intervention by deconcentrating poverty can bring more people to work and increase the productivity of the city and lead to economic growth. Redistribution of income has been one of the objectives of the public policies in many cities but there is greater need for ‘Spatial redistribution’ which leads to better economic, social, and political redistribution and ultimately fair economic growth. Social Housing can be one of the major instrument for promoting equity in cities, housing not only gives the much desired shelter but it gives poor an asset and a stake in the society, contributing to greater happiness and satisfaction. Social Housing should be planned on the principle of mixed land use to create not only vibrancy and dynamism in cities but can also be a great instrument of unity within diversity.

Inspite of the best intentions and efforts of the urban planners, the goal of Just Cities may remain elusive, because ultimately the future of cities depends on the ‘political will’ and ‘administrative mindset’. With the rise of communicative planning, the bargaining power of the rich has increased because they are better organized, informed and own all the medium of communication, with the poor and marginalized thrown out of this communication process. So bottom up planning process may not represent the interests of the poor unless special efforts are made by the concerned leadership.

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