877670

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PLT0010.1177/1473095219877670Planning TheoryMoroni

Original Article

Planning Theory
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The just city. Three © The Author(s) 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095219877670
DOI: 10.1177/1473095219877670
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social justice and distributive

justice, concept of justice and
conceptions of justice

Stefano Moroni
Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy

Abstract
In the fields of planning theory and human geography, there is a growing discussion of the just
city. The impression is that in order to continue the discussion of the crucial issue of the just city,
certain methodological considerations and precautions are necessary. The article is focused on
three in particular: (a) (urban) institutions as the first subject of justice, (b) the incomplete overlap
between social justice and distributive justice, (c) the distinction between the concept and the
conceptions of social justice. The impression is that these three issues are not always recognised,
or at least not always to the fullest extent, in the current debate in planning theory.

Keywords
just city, local government, planning theory, social justice, spatial justice

Introduction: discussing the just city

In the fields of planning theory and human geography, there is a growing discussion of
the just city. As well known, one of the first books to discuss the issue of justice and the
city was David Harvey’s (1973) celebrated work. The theme of justice at the local level
was subsequently taken up in various publications (e.g. Mier, 1993). More specific dis-
cussion of the just city, however, has gained particular momentum from various articles
by Susan Fainstein (2000, 2001, 2005) and from her more recent book (Fainstein, 2010).
Fainstein (2010) explicitly speaks of an urban theory of justice. As she writes: ‘I have

Corresponding author:
Stefano Moroni, Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani, Polytechnic University of Milan, via Bonardi 3,
20133 Milano, Italy.
Email: stefano.moroni@polimi.it
2 Planning Theory 00(0)

posited the just city as the appropriate object of planning’ (Fainstein, 2005: 126). Other
influential works in this regard include David M. Smith (1994), Peter Marcuse et al.
(2009) and Edward Soja (2010). Harvey himself has authoritatively returned to the sub-
ject several times (e.g. Harvey, 1992, 1996). More recently, many other authors have
further developed discussion of the issue of justice in urban contexts.1
It is interesting that the American Planning Association’s Code of ethics and profes-
sional conduct explicitly states (with reference to the public responsibilities of planners:
Section A. Principles to Which We Aspire, version adopted in 2005) the following:

We shall seek social justice by working to expand choice and opportunity for all persons,
recognizing a special responsibility to plan for the needs of the disadvantaged and to promote
racial and economic integration. We shall urge the alteration of policies, institutions, and
decisions that oppose such needs.2

In order to continue the discussion of the crucial issue of the just city, certain meth-
odological considerations and precautions seem necessary. I shall focus on three in par-
ticular: (a) (urban) institutions as the first subject of justice, (b) the incomplete overlap
between social justice and distributive justice, (c) the distinction between the concept
and the conceptions of social justice. The impression is that these three issues are not
always recognised, or at least not always to the fullest extent, in the current debate in
planning theory (as I shall seek to show in what follows by considering each of them in
separate sections).
In discussing these issues, I am obviously assuming3 that the discourses on justice are
meaningful even if they are not clearly ‘empirical’ in a strict sense. In particular, it may be
claimed that the mere distinction between empirical discourses and normative discourses
(Hare, 1952) yields nothing automatically with regard to the meaningfulness of the latter.
In other words, we may accept the distinction between empirical discourses (e.g. dis-
courses on the functioning of the city as a socio-spatial system) and normative discourses
(e.g. discourses regarding which urban institutions are preferable) while at the same time
acknowledging that adequate forms of argumentation can be developed in both spheres.
In this perspective, legality and justice obviously do not coincide with each other.4
Discourses relating to justice are discourses that are critical of existing institutions, laws
and measures; for example, discourses which are critical of urban institutions and rules
regarding the use and transformation of spaces and buildings. As Benjamin Davy (1997)
aptly observes,

If justice under the law only asserts that everybody shall comply with the law, ‘justice’ equals
legality. Many people seem to expect more from justice, however, than full compliance with the
law. Of course, the law itself has to be just! (p. 245)

Before dealing with the three above-mentioned issues it should also be pointed out
that the interest in and importance of a theme such as that of the ‘just city’ depend on two
main aspects.
First of all, it depends on the fact that an ever-increasing proportion of the global popu-
lation lives in cities. Far from having lost their central role, as many had superficially
Moroni 3

prophesised (e.g. assigning a destructive role to telecommunications in relation to geo-

graphical concentrations), cities have remained crucial (Florida, 2008; Glaeser, 2011;
Sassen, 2000). Although they have always been significant in human history, only today
are they being transformed for the first time into our universal living environment
(Schneider, 2003). Cities have been effectively highly successful in their development:
in Europe today, more than 75% of individuals live in cities (Le Galès, 2002); and 80%
of the wealth produced in developed countries comes from cities (Landry, 2008).
According to some estimates, urban land cover in developed countries ‘will more than
double between 2000 and 2030, and will triple between 2000 and 2050’; in developing
countries urban land cover ‘will grow by 158% between 2000 and 2030, and by 315%
between 2000 and 2050’ (Angel et al., 2011: 95–96).
Second, public urban institutions determine the access of individuals and groups to
certain fundamental means towards many ends, such as particular kinds of powers,
statuses, resources and so on. Clearly, the city is one layer in a wider hierarchy of gov-
ernance, but there are fields in which local governments have considerable autonomy
and significant power to affect citizens’ opportunities and well-being (Fainstein, 2009:
20–21). In fact, local governments can strongly affect their citizens’ lives in many ways,
in particular through the following ten kinds of measure or intervention: (1) rules and
regulations (e.g. land use plans, building regulations, pollution standards, health guide-
lines, traffic signs and road markings, municipal ordinances), (2) bureaucratic proce-
dures (e.g. obtaining a building permit or a licence to start a new business), (3) legally
binding information (e.g. cadastral data/maps), (4) advice and assistance (e.g. for small
businesses), (5) taxes (e.g. property taxes, building taxes, tourism taxes), (6) fees and
charges (e.g. road and bridge tolls, parking charges), (7) incentives (e.g. tax abatements,
exemptions, or rebates), (8) subsidies (e.g. subsidies for housing), (9) services (e.g.
police and fire protection, health, public education, garbage collection, snow removal),
(10) infrastructure provision (e.g. tram and metro lines, streets, pedestrian areas, sewage
systems).5
In certain respects, the role of local governments is even increasing today in many
countries. As Marisol García (2006) observes, in most EU member states, for instance,
both regions and cities ‘are gaining more responsibility for the administration of social
policy resources as well as for the management of services’ (p. 746, see also Andreotti
and Mingione, 2013).
This obviously does not mean that local governments can pursue social justice on
their own (actions and changes are clearly necessary at higher institutional levels as well:
Marcuse, 2009: 100–101; Potter and Novy, 2009: 233–234); however, it does mean that
their role in this regard is still, today more than ever, decisive.
Independently from the institutional level concerned, I am assuming here that we are
discussing issues of justice for some form of constitutional democratic system.

First issue: (urban) institutions as the subject of (social)

justice
It is first of all important to stress that public institutions (i.e. the legal system’s definition
of political powers and of the rights and duties of citizens, and the public bodies and
4 Planning Theory 00(0)

agencies entailed by all of this) are the true subject of social justice. As Aaron James
(2005) notes: ‘If anything is to be assessed and guided according to canons of social
justice, it is surely the [. . .] institutions of the modern state. State institutions [. . .] are
the paradigm subject of social justice’ (p. 25). It is so because state institutions claim an
exclusive right to the use of coercion. The question of justice is the question of power:
‘this is the original, political meaning of social justice’ (Forst, 2012: 195).
In short, justice is predicated primarily on the basic institutions of society (Barry, 1989;
Höffe, 1987; Rawls, 1971, 1993). It is the first virtue of public institutions (Rawls, 1971: 3,
586). As Alan Ryan (1993) writes: ‘Justice is the most “political” or institutional of the
virtues’ (p. 1). It is justice that legitimises public institutions (Wissenburg, 1999: 3).
Two essential clarifications are necessary here. First, we are talking about something
(i.e. a set of public institutions) that depends on humans for its existence and agency.
Sometimes we use the terms ‘just’ or ‘unjust’ for phenomena which are independent of
human action; for instance, when we say that it is not ‘just’ that it rains more in the north
of a certain country than in the south. Yet this is an inappropriate, incomplete use of the
terms ‘just’ or ‘unjust’; the notion of justice is actually a normative – that is, a rule-
assessing and regulation-guiding – concept (Stumpf et al., 2016: 1192). Second, we are
talking about something (that is, a set of public institutions, as already said) which con-
strains or encourages, penalises or rewards, possible human actions and interactions. For
example, those who criticise privatisation and commodification in sectors which they
believe should remain in public hands (e.g. water supply) are essentially criticising, in
light of a substantive idea of social justice, the institutional changes that have made this
possible: certain forms of deregulation, the extension of the range of application of pri-
vate property rights and so on. Patrick Bond (2008) for instance observes in this regard:
‘Commodification in the water sector has generated some of the most intense local
social-justice struggles in the world today, calling into question the very tenets of neolib-
eralism in state services provision’ (p. 51).
In conclusion, when we ask what is the judicandum in our case (i.e. what is judged
to be just or unjust: Stumpf et al., 2016), the answer is that sets of institutions are the
judicanda. From this perspective, a just city is therefore a city whose public institu-
tions are just.
It is the basic urban institutional framework which must satisfy criteria of justice.
Considered in these terms, if we speak, for example, of the injustice of certain urban situ-
ations – for example the state of certain peripheral neighbourhoods or the inaccessibility
of certain basic urban services – we are actually assuming implicitly that what is unjust
in reality are the urban institutions that have allowed such situations to arise and do not
intervene in order to right them. To quote Iris M. Young (2003),

If we wish to understand and criticize the way that many individuals and groups face too limited
and unsavory sets of options, then we need an account of large-scale systemic outcomes of the
operations of many institutions and practices that constrain some people at the same time that
they enable others. (p. 4)

In the perspective adopted here, questions of urban justice are intrinsically questions
of, so to speak, ‘institutional justice’. Therefore, the idea of ‘spatial justice’ (a concept
Moroni 5

increasingly used in planning theory and human geography6) can only be something like
a derivative concept.7 (Observe that it is not ‘space’, that is in any sense derivative, but
the notion of ‘spatial justice’ in itself). ‘Spatial justice’ is therefore not a sub-category of
the general idea of social justice or the just city, but a sort of ‘shorthand expression’
(a compressed expression) to denote desirable or undesirable spatial situations and
arrangements occurring within a certain (just or unjust) institutional framework. In other
words, desirable or undesirable spatial consequences run back into – and from – the
urban basic institutions.
The point here is not whether or not space is relevant; space is certainly relevant,
but this notwithstanding the point is that the predicate ‘(social) justice’ is a predicate to
be directly applied to public institutions. In other words, this is not a matter of ignoring
everything that is not ‘institution/s’ (various other elements, in fact, obviously influ-
ence urban life); but rather of underlining that a judgement of (social) justice or injus-
tice applies to the institutions that form the basic framework within which various
situations occur.

Second issue: the incomplete overlap between social justice

and distributive justice
Very often the discussion – and the planning and urban policy fields are no exception –
seems to be based on the assumption that the issue of social justice coincides with the
issue of distributive justice. As if the only ethical issue at stake in local government is
who gets what? As Joseph M. Heikoff (1967) wrote with regard to urban planning,

The idea of distributive justice points the way to arriving at operational criteria of social justice.
We see that it has economic and political components. The economic aspect of social justice is
concerned with the distribution of income and access to economic resources and other economic
goods. The political component is concerned with the distribution of political rights. (p. 51)

In the more recent discussion in the planning theory field, social justice and distributive
justice are considered equivalent for example by Shean McConnell (1981): ‘in the moral
or ethical usages, justice may be considered as social justice [.  . .] and is concerned with
distributive principles, or with who is to get how much of some benefit which will con-
tribute to well-being’ (p. 157, see also McConnell, 1995). A similar point is stressed by
Emil Israel and Amnon Frenkel (2018): ‘Social justice traditionally refers to the distribu-
tion of benefits and burdens in society [.  .  .]. As such, the relevant metric of justice treats
different sets of goods [. . .] to be distributed [. . .]’ (p. 648). See also Karel Martens
(2006) in discussing about transport planning, ‘Social justice is understood here as the
morally proper distribution of goods and bads across members of society’ (p. 3). Consider,
finally, Elizabeth Burton (2003), ‘There are numerous interpretations of the idea of
social justice but the one perhaps most relevant to urban form is the notion of distributive
justice, fairness in the apportionment of resources in society’ (p. 539).
In other words (Beauchamp, 1980: 134), it is often assumed that social justice and
distributive justice are synonymous expressions. Yet this is not the case: we should be
wary of considering these two terms synonymous (Lucas, 1980: 163).
6 Planning Theory 00(0)

It is well known that Aristotle spoke of distributive justice, defining it as that type of
justice exercised in the distribution of, for example, ‘wealth and the other divisible assets
of the community’ (Ethica Nicomachea, 1130b 30–34). He placed other types of justice
alongside it. It is not actually clear how many types of justice Aristotle acknowledged
(justice-in-exchange, corrective justice, etc.), but what is certain is that so-called dis-
tributive justice did not cover the entire field of justice. In addition, distributive justice
regarded, in his perspective, only certain types of goods: according to Aristotle, distribu-
tive justice ‘can be exercised whenever there is some divisible good or evil that can be
distributed among individuals’ (Acton, 1972: 422).
And thus it was for many subsequent scholars. Yet other scholars, in more recent
times, have come to identify issues of distributive justice with issues of justice proper.
Herbert Hart (1961) does so, for example, in a highly influential book. Hart claims that
justice has to do with the distribution of advantages and disadvantages and applies this
idea to virtually every public problem. As Hart (1961) writes: ‘the justice or injustices
of laws [. . .] may be viewed as distributing among individuals burdens and benefit’
(p. 163; emphasis in the original). Hart (1961: 163) continues by observing that some
of the benefits (or costs) distributed are tangible, such as ‘poor relief’ or ‘food rations’,
while others are intangible, such as ‘protection from bodily harm’ or ‘the right to vote’.
Yet in this case the point is not so much the difference between what is tangible and
what is intangible as it is between goods that are distributable in the strict sense and
goods which are not distributable at all (for instance we may extend voting rights with-
out necessarily taking them away from those who already have them). In short, while
some of the things Hart discusses are ‘distributable’ in the strict sense – and tied to
scarcity – others are not.
To cite another authoritative, influential author, here is a comparable definition of
justice provided by William Frankena (1962):

Justice [. . .] seems to have at its center the notion of an allotment of something to persons –
duties, goods, offices, opportunities, penalties, punishments, privileges, roles, status, and so on.
[. . .] Justice simply is the apportionment of what is to be apportioned in accordance with the
amount or degree in which the recipients possess some required feature – personal ability,
desert, merit, rank, or wealth. (p. 9, 10)

A similar view is put forward by Andrew Dobson (1998) and David Miller (1999). The
same critical remarks made with regard to Hart apply here as well.
Along similar lines, Iris M. Young (1990) has questioned the overextension of the
concept of distribution by many scholars, most of whom, as she notes, take it as given
that justice specifically concerns distribution. Such an approach assumes a single model
for all assessments of justice: that is to say, all situations in which justice is at issue are
considered analogous to the situation of individuals apportioning a fixed stock of goods
and comparing the size of the portions each individual receives (Young, 1990: 18).
Young points out that while it may make sense to speak of the distribution of material
goods, it certainly makes no sense to speak of the distribution of – for instance – rights,
opportunities or powers. As she writes,
Moroni 7

What can it mean to distribute rights that do not refer to resources or things, like the right of free
speech, or the right of trial by jury? We can conceive of a society in which some persons are
granted these rights while others are not, but this does not mean that some people have a certain
‘amount’ or ‘portion’ of a good while others have less.(Young, 1990: 25)

The scope of justice is therefore wider than distributive issues (Young, 1990: 33).
In brief, issues of distributive justice regard only ‘distributable goods’, that is, scarce
resources or goods which are (a) assignable, (b) privative and (c) transferable. The first
characteristic implies that someone must be able to obtain the availability of these goods
or of some element of them. The second refers to the fact that the enjoyment of a certain
good by certain individuals prevents others from enjoying it. The third characteristic
has to do with the actual possibility of reallocating (the availability of) a good from one
individual to another (Lucas, 1980: 163–170; compare with Ericsson, 1976: 19 and
Bojer, 2003: 8).
Consider, for example, public decisions that concern if and to whom (that is, to which
category of persons endowed with what characteristics to be included in this category) to
assign: (a) public housing dwelling units or forms of rental assistance and supplements
(for discussions on low-income housing policies in light of the notion of distributive
justice, see for example, Infranca, 2015; Jonkman et al., 2018), (b) vouchers to access
certain services or stamps to purchase healthy food, (c) incentives for the refurbishment
and upgrading of aging buildings, (d) subsidies and incentives (feed-in-tariffs, grant and
loan programmes, tax credits and rebates, etc.) for the use of small plants based on
renewable sources, such as photovoltaic panels or microwind turbines (for the debate on
this issue, in terms of distributive justice, see for example, Finley-Brook and Holloman,
2016; Gough, 2013; Granqvist and Grover, 2016; Simpson and Clifton, 2016; Zhou and
Noonan, 2019), (e) fiscal incentives to start up new forms of urban business.
These are clearly all cases where people belonging to a certain category X, rather than
those in other categories, receive something; and in which those belonging to category Y
may, for example, have to pay higher taxes for this to be possible.
In conclusion, no issue of distributive justice can arise over non-assignable, non-
privative, non-transferable goods; the crucial point here is that not all benefits or burdens
can be distributed (Lucas, 1980: 163). If we wish to continue to use the expression ‘dis-
tributive justice’, we must recognise that it applies only to certain scarce goods. Hence a
theory of distributive justice will need to be only a part of a more general normative
theory of institutions and not the normative theory of institutions. We can then choose
whether to use the expressions ‘social justice’, ‘political justice’, ‘structural justice’ or
any other expression to denote the more general concept. But the crucial point is that in
moving towards justice questions of distribution are important, but incomplete
(Schlosberg, 2004: 518; compare with Smith, 1994: 24–27; Dikeç, 2001; Marcuse, 2009:
91–92; Walker, 2009 and Davoudi and Brooks, 2014).
It should be noted that the point is not merely that we should also ask ourselves why
certain distributable urban goods are important8 or question the way in which certain
distributable urban goods have been produced (and therefore not only consider what
their distribution happens to be at time tn).9 The point is even more radical: that when it
comes to some urban goods, benefits or rights, which indubitably raise issues of social
8 Planning Theory 00(0)

justice, it makes absolutely no sense to speak in distributive terms (they do not raise
issues of distributive justice). Consider, for instance, the right to profess one’s own reli-
gion in a place of faith expressly built and arranged for this purpose (Chiodelli and
Moroni, 2017); the right not to be discriminated against – in public spaces or in collective
private spaces like restaurants or cinemas – in terms of skin colour, ethnic origin, gender,
and so on (Chiodelli and Moroni, 2014; Moroni and Chiodelli, 2016); the freedom to
found or join local consumers’ or citizens’ associations and organisations; the right not to
be adversely affected by the negative externalities of certain urban activities; the possi-
bility to express one’s own opinions freely in public as well as open private spaces; the
opportunity to participate fully in the democratic life of a city and so on.
Observe that the point here is not to distinguish between distributive justice and pro-
cedural justice: a recurrent10 but quite misleading distinction. The point is rather to dis-
tinguish between distributive justice in the strict sense (with its procedural and substantive
dimensions) and a wider idea of social justice (again with its procedural and substantive
dimensions) which includes distributive questions.11
And observe that the point is not to fragment issues of justice into an indefinite num-
ber of ‘spheres of justice’ (Walzer, 1983), but merely to distinguish between social jus-
tice as the higher-order normative value for judging and guiding public institutions (in
their procedural and substantive aspects) and particular instances or cases of it when
certain conditions are in place (e.g. scarce distributable goods).

Third issue: concept of justice and conceptions of justice

On reading certain texts, one may gain the impression that the expression just city denotes
in and of itself a specific normative theory of planning and of urban policies. In a well-
known article, Susan Fainstein (2000), for example, critically discusses what she consid-
ers to be the three main approaches in contemporary planning theory. She writes, ‘I
examine the three approaches [. . .] under the rubrics of (1) the communicative model,
(2) the new urbanism, and (3) the just city’ (Fainstein, 2000: 452).
The reality is that each (normative) theory of planning and of urban policies assumes
an idea of the just city. To consider only the other two alternatives mentioned in Fainstein’s
article: Frank Fischer (2009), for example, argues for a discursive approach in the search
for justice in the city; and Cliff Ellis (2002) claims that the New Urbanism movement has
the capacity to contribute to bringing about a just city.12
Again Fainstein (2010) writes,

The choice of justice as the governing norm for evaluating urban policy is obviously value
laden. It reacts to the current emphasis on competitiveness and the dominance in policy making
of neoliberal formulations that aim at reducing government intervention and enabling market
processes. (p. 8, see also Fainstein and Fainstein, 2013)

This view – that is, the idea that embracing the ideal of justice in planning entails in itself
contesting the so-called neoliberal policies and practices – is widely accepted in planning
theory and human geography (see for instance Maricato, 2009; Perry and Atherton, 2017;
Walks, 2009).
Moroni 9

We may agree that it is necessary to conduct a critical discussion of what today is

called ‘neoliberalism’. But this means contesting a certain (neoliberal) conception of
justice and suggesting alternative ones (Edwards, 2015). In discussing urban issues,
Helga Leitner et al. (2007: 10) correctly note that what we call neoliberalism actually
entails its particular conception of justice. (On ‘neoliberal justice’ and ‘neoliberal justice
principles’, see Ciplet and Roberts, 2017; Okereke, 2007).
In general, the crucial point is that, when speaking of (social) justice, we should dis-
tinguish more clearly between (a) the concept of (social) justice and (b) various concep-
tions of (social) justice (Gosepath, 2001; Korsgaard, 1996; Rawls, 1971; Stumpf et al.,
2016).
According to the general concept of (social) justice, institutions are just when no arbi-
trary distinction is drawn among individuals in the recognition of fundamental duties and
rights, and when public rules define a proper balance among competing claims (Rawls,
1971: 5–6).13 In other terms, ‘just’ is what would be justifiable to anyone on ignoring indi-
vidual positions. Specific substantive conceptions of social justice will suggest which dif-
ferences and similarities between individuals are crucial in defining basic duties and rights
and which balance of competing claims is legitimate and desirable (Rawls, 1971: 5–6).
In short, we have a concept and its conceptions: the general concept refers to the uni-
tary idea represented by it and is constituted by a list of core features, while specific
conceptions are different ways in which the general concept can be specified and repre-
sent the level at which the content and context occur (Stumpf et al., 2016: 1189). We may
say that the concept poses and names the problem, while the conceptions propose and
specify a solution (Korsgaard, 1996: 114).
From this perspective, a concept constitutes an abstract ideal on which all participants
in a discourse may agree and which can be developed argumentatively in different ways;
the realisation and operationalisation of a concept in this sense is achieved by means of
a particular conception (Voget-Kleschin and Meisch, 2015: 50–51). Actually, ‘it is
entirely possible, and common, for people to disagree pretty profoundly in their concep-
tions of justice [. . .] or whatever else, while nevertheless employing the same concept,
and hence the same definition of the word’ (Flew, 1985: 191). Questioning specific con-
ceptions does not therefore prove that the general concept is in itself wrong; it merely
expresses dissent in terms of how the concept is to be realised (Voget-Kleschin and
Meisch, 2015: 51).14
In conclusion, the general concept of social justice is therefore value-laden to only
a minor extent. What is strictly value-laden – in Fainstein’s strong, positive sense – are
the various conceptions of social justice. The concept is thin, while the conceptions are
thick.
Of course, I do not wish to argue15 that the concept of social justice is morally neutral:
that is, a sort of analytical truth. What I wish to underline is that also positions which
hold very different substantive conceptions of the just city may converge on a shared
concept of justice. It also follows that merely appealing to the concept of justice does not
in itself place one in any particular substantive critical position, also in the field of plan-
ning theory or human geography.
To conclude with Benjamin Davy’s (1997: 255) observation: urban policies and plan-
ning explicitly or implicitly apply some conception of justice. This is inevitable. The
10 Planning Theory 00(0)

question is therefore not whether justice is important for urban policy and planning, but
which conception of justice is chosen for their design (Davy, 1997: 255).

Concluding remarks
The purpose of this article has not been to defend any specific substantive conception of
justice and the just city; rather, it has been to draw attention to a number of analytical and
methodological issues which should be kept in mind in debates on the issue. Three of
them in particular.
First, a judgement of (social) justice or injustice applies properly and primarily to
public institutions: for example, in our case, to urban institutions. In fact, issues of justice
arise when there are certain power structures in need of justification. It is important to
stress that although justice makes demands upon our institutions, this does not mean that
there are no other moral demands to which we are subject, for instance in urban contexts;
simply, the latter are not demands of (social) justice (Porter, 2009). In short, ‘justice does
not cover the entire normative world and only applies to particular normative contexts’
(Forst, 2012: 9).
Second, issues concerning ‘who gets what’ in urban contexts are important (Vasu,
1979), but they represent only a part – a sub-section – of the broader problem of social
(or structural or political) justice. In other words, not everything is distributable, or
redistributable.
Third, invoking the idea of justice is not in itself to assume any critical position with
respect to the current urban situation (for example, with respect to urban realities result-
ing from the so-called ‘neo-liberal turn’); this can only happen by developing specific
substantive conceptions of justice – which will have to confront with other possible
alternative conceptions.

ORCID iD
Stefano Moroni https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3542-2073

Notes
  1. Considering the period since 2000, the issue of just cities has been discussed for instance by
Visser (2001), Cardoso and Breda-Vázquez (2007), Thomas (2008), Irázabal (2009), Irazábal
and Punja (2009), Dooling (2009), Pavel (2009), King (2011), Fincher and Iveson (2012),
Steele et al. (2012), Winkler (2012), Castán Broto et al. (2013), Chung (2013), Talen (2013),
Alfasi and Fenster (2014), Reardon and Dymén (2015), Song (2015), Basta (2016), Low
and Iveson (2016), Davison (2017), Pierce and Martin (2017), Perry and Atherton (2017),
Uitermark and Nicholls (2017), Williams (2017), Grooms and Frimpong Boamah (2018),
Jonkman and Janssen-Jansen (2018), Larson (2018), Medved (2018), Reece (2018), Hyra
et al. (2019) and Kim et al. (2019). Several authors have resumed discussion of the more
general relationship between geography and questions of justice: for example, Smith (2000),
Valentine (2003), Barnett (2011), Storper (2011) and Israel and Frenkel (2018).
  2. See https://www.planning.org/ethics/ethicscode/ (accessed July 2018). For a reconstruction
of the evolution of the code of professional conduct published by the American association of
planners, see recently Thomas, 2019; as she underscores, its first version dates back to 1948;
provisions for social justice were included in the code in 1972.
Moroni 11

  3. Contrary to what is for instance assumed by Kelsen (1949) who claims: ‘Justice is an irra-
tional ideal. However indispensable it may be for volition and action of men, it is not subject
to cognition’ (p. 13). In the planning literature, see for example Reade (1985).
  4. As argued again – in my view, equally erroneously – by Kelsen (1949). Indeed, according to
Kelsen, the only way ‘to withdraw the problem of justice from the insecure realm of subjec-
tive judgments of value’ is to reduce it to the idea of legality; as he writes,

it is ‘just’ for a general rule to be actually applied in all cases where, according to its content,
this rule should be applied. [.  .  .] Justice, in the sense of legality, is a quality which relates not
to the content of a positive order, but to its application. (Kelsen, 1949: 14)

  5. For a comparison of roles, tasks and expenditures of local governments in various countries,
see for instance Shah (2006).
  6. See Pirie (1983) among the first, and, more recently and since the influential work of Soja
(2010), for example MacLeod (2002), Ansaloni and Tedeschi (2016), Barbieri et al. (2019)
and Certomà and Martellozzo (2019).
  7. See on this Marcuse (2010). For the debate on Marcuse’s position, see Iveson (2011).
  8. As Wolman and Goldsmith (1992) have already observed,

some analysts, approaching urban politics from a distributive perspective, contend that the
importance of urban government lies primarily in the role they play in determining who gets
what [. . .]. The unanswered (and usually unasked) question in most of these ‘who gets what’
studies is in what sense the outputs being distributed by local governments are themselves
“important”. (p. 3)

  9. See Stanczyk (2012): ‘How are the goods whose distribution justice governs to be produced
in the first place? By whom, in what quantity, and on what terms?’ (p. 144). In other words,
‘A just society must provide a range of goods [. . .]. But how should a just society organize
production of these goods?’ (Stanczyk, 2012: 165).
10. See in general, for example, Törnblom and Vermunt (2007), and, in planning theory, for
example, Nylund (2014) and Anguelovski et al. (2016).
11. Note, in fact, that if a theory of social justice and a theory of distributive justice as part
of it are conceived for institutions of a constitutional democracy (Rawls, 1971), they will
inevitably be partly substantive (they will for example define a priori specific substantive
powers, rights and outcomes) and partly procedural (they will envisage formal guarantees
and public procedures for further collective decisions to be taken on an ongoing basis). Innes
and Booher (2015) have rightly pointed out that in planning theory an excessively dichoto-
mous use is often made of the distinction between (urban) substantive outcomes and (urban)
decisional processes.
12. Ellis (2002), for example, writes that ‘design can play a role in improving the prospects for a
just city’ (p. 281).
13. Compare with Ginsberg’s (1965) discussion.
14. With regard to the usefulness of distinguishing between a ‘concept (of something)’ and
several ‘conceptions (of something)’ also in the case of other notions, see Dworkin (1977:
131–149) on ‘fairness’, Thompson and Dean (1996) on ‘risk’, Okoye (2009) on ‘corporate
social responsibility’, Hinsch (2010) on ‘legitimacy’, Kauppinen (2012) on ‘meaningful life’,
Voget-Kleschin and Meisch (2015) on ‘sustainable development’.
15. Because it would be mistaken: Campbell (1988: 5).
12 Planning Theory 00(0)

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Author biography
Stefano Moroni is Professor of Planning at Polytechnic University of Milan (Italy). He mainly
works on applied ethics and planning theory.