Abstract
Unlike political science and sociology, what the field of planning research still lacks is a regular body of literature which places power relations at its core in spite of the clear links between planning and power; injustice is only one manifestation of power dynamics in our cities. Justice and the American Metropolis came about as a result of a conference organised by the two editors, Clarissa Hayward and Todd Swanstrom. The book highlights key issues such as metropolitan injustice, poverty (or the unequal distribution of income and wealth) and how these manifest themselves across physical and social space and link to global patterns, in spite of this being a book focused on the nature of injustice in metropolitan America.
The book’s aims are unambiguous and it rushes into an exciting first chapter that gives the reader plenty to think about, particularly to zero in on what struck [the editors] as a glaring anomaly: metropolitan injustices were as acute as ever … and to put justice back in the forefront of debates about American urban policy (p. vii).
The editors do not attribute these metropolitan inequalities solely to the rightward shift in US political discourse witnessed over the past few years. This shift, they argue, is the result of the rise of what they identify as “thick injustice” (p. 9), one that is “deep”, “dense”, and “extending far down from the surface”. They outline three characteristics of contemporary American metropolitan injustice that renders it “thick”. These are: the deep historical roots of unjust power relations in America’s cities and suburbs; their interaction with the institutional structure of local governance; and their embeddedness in physical places. These traits, they point out, “obscure metropolitan injustice making it difficult to penetrate” and difficult to “assign moral responsibility for injustice and to motivate collective action to change it” (p. 9). Hayward and Swanstrom cite Young (2000, p. 208) who also emphasises the physical nature of injustice arguing that the “everyday separation of the lives of the more and less privileged that is part of the process of residential racial segregation makes it unnecessary for the privileged to think about social injustice except in the most abstract terms”. Elsewhere in the book, in ‘Property-owning plutocracy: inequality and American localism’ (ch. 1), Macedo agrees with this view stating that “aside from considerations of justice, the better off seems to have little incentive to do anything” (p. 54). This is the result of competition between local communities and homeowners creating a race to the top for some while leaving many behind, breeding isolation; and, the more isolated people become, the less they share with others unlike themselves and of course the more they fear them, creating even more injustice and segregation. Hence, the physical embodiment of wealth is celebrity-styled existence in enclaves (gated communities) protected from those less fortunate (Sardar, 2010).
Looking at the whole book, the contributing chapters come under four sections: ‘The roots of injustice in the American metropolis’ (chapters from Stephen Macedo, Loren King and Margaret Kohn); ‘Rethinking metropolitan inequality’ (chapters from Douglas W. Rae and Clarence N. Stone); ‘Planning for justice’ (chapters from Susan S. Fainstein and Thad Williamson); and ‘Justice and institutions’ (chapters from Gerald Frug, Richard Thompson Ford and Margaret Weir).
In ‘Redevelopment planning and distributive justice in the American metropolis’ (ch. 6), Fainstein argues that redevelopment programmes that aimed in the US to improve the quality and efficiency of existing cities “penetrated injustice at the same time as claiming to benefit the poor and people of colour in inner city neighbourhoods” (p. 149). Fainstein examines the forces and drivers shaping American redevelopment policy and defines justice as “reflecting the criteria of equity, democracy and diversity” (p. 150). She is unequivocal about the relationship between spatial and social inequality (p. 163). This is something the editors highlight much earlier in the book when they state that the unequal distribution of income and wealth … grants the advantaged disproportionate access to basic public goods, including police protection and education. … It produces inequalities in the opportunity to access labour markets and compete for jobs and to access consumer goods (p. 7).
These spatially induced social inequalities are alluded to by Saskia Sassen in the fourth edition of Cities in a World Economy (2012). In chapter 9 of this edition (p. 325), Sassen highlights “the sharpening distance between the extremes evident in all major cities of developed countries”; Fainstein acknowledges the utility of the concept of ‘think injustice’ and also suggests that “disrupting past patterns of segregation through either gentrification or outmigration of poor and minorities does not diminish the structural forces producing income inequality” (p. 162).
This dynamic involving “new forms of inequality constituted into new social forms” (Sassen, 2012, p. 327) links with ideas of social justice and public interest, public concerns and the dominance of private interests. This is the subject of Williamson’s work (ch. 7) in the book. Here, he emphasises the role of the local level in relegitimating the activist state (what he calls a “a vibrant public sector”, p. 178) in order to address conceptions of social justice and advance public concerns over dominant private interests. He uses a case study of public leadership in Richmond, Virginia, to illustrate the challenges one can encounter when attempting to rehabilitate an activist public sector in inhospitable settings.
Elsewhere, there are some notable examples of local citizens’ movements seeking to enhance their local environments. The experience of community-led planning in King’s Cross in London is one (see Edwards, 2010); the Japanese counter-movement to official planning known as Machizukuri is another. In a discussion of the international experience of place-making, Friedmann notes that while Machizukuri is “not a precise term and has multiple and contested meanings” (2010, p. 159), what is beyond dispute is its importance for the ways Japanese cities are being governed today, “no longer exclusively at a distance from central ministries, but more frequently through the synergies of local effort”. Friedmann cites this as an example of how places can be ‘taken back’ neighbourhood by neighbourhood, through collaborative people-centred planning. However, as Cliff Hague (2012) points out, it appears that central government in Japan remains the key player in the statutory planning system and that the courts still uphold this national supremacy. Thus, Hague concludes, to succeed in practice, Japanese localism depends on voluntary agreements with developers.
Williamson indicates that something similar could happen in the US where the forging of this kind of coalition “re-establishes the legitimacy of meaningful public sector action” (p. 194) and where local public officials could play a role in mobilising low-income residents and help to forge a coalition between them and the middle classes, creating what I have called elsewhere ‘networks of influence and affluence’. This job, Williamson concludes, falls to citizens. He points out that the burden of creating and building a “truly multiracial coalition on behalf of social justice must rest with civic and grassroots activists committed to creating and sustaining long term solidarity across difference” (p. 195).
Weir’s last chapter in the book, ‘Creating justice for the poor in the new metropolis’, ends by suggesting a need to rethink key aspects of the way metropolitan inequalities are researched and approached, recognising how federal policy can strengthen the voice of low-income Americans. Unlike Williamson, she suggests that “a focus on institutions as well as individuals is needed” (p. 252) in order to design “policies that promote inclusion” (p. 253).
Justice and the American Metropolis’s main contribution for me lies in that it asks the reader to do exactly that: to rethink the way we research and approach inequalities in our cities—not only American cities as is implied in the title, but also including global cities that can also somehow be informed by it.