A New Formulation of the Concept of the Spatial Justice Discourse: A Framework for the Analysis of Tehrān City

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Urban Planning,Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

2 Assistant Professor, Department of Regional and Urban planning, Institute of Human and Social Science Research, Tehran, Iran

3 Ph.D. Student, Geography and Urban Planning, Institute of Human and Social Science Research, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Background: The issue of justice and its link with the space in the form of the spatial justice discourse has become one of the main issues in the urban topics in the last two decades. The spatial sensitivity to the justice and knowing the processes and regulations leading to it is considered a very important issue, due to the extensive spatial changes in Tehrān, especially in the recent years.
Objectives: The purpose of this study was to present a different analysis of the spatial justice discourse based on the dialectical formulation of this concept and its assessment in Tehrān.
Method: It was a mixed methods study with a sequential exploratory design. Here, there is an initial phase of the qualitative data collection and analysis, followed by a phase of the quantitative data collection and analysis (with more emphasis on the first qualitative phase). So, after the final selection of the criteria of the spatial justice discourse and its components based on the theoretical frameworks, with regard to the dimensions considered for the research; at first, the urban management policy paper was evaluated based on these criteria and using the method of the theme analysis.
Result: In the next step, the results of the urban management policy-making in the urban space have been examined through the quantitative method, the secondary analysis and the analysis of the statistical results.
Conclusion: The results have been explained in the form of the two concepts of "justice/injustice of spatiality" and "spatiality of justice/injustice". Based on the first concept that implies the capacity of the existing structures to generate the injustice through space; some areas and dimensions of the spatial justice have been addressed relatively in the urban management policy paper. Based on the second concept, through which the injustice in the space could be understood by analyzing the distributive patterns, the spatiality of injustice has a concrete manifestation in the context of Tehrān, and the desired goals of the urban management policy making have not been met in many areas.

Highlights

The issue of spatial/urban justice has undergone many conceptual changes in an attempt to rethink the relationship between power, space, policy-making and planning.

In this paper, based on new approaches emphasizing the dialectical formulation of the concept of spatial justice from the point of view of Soja and Dikec, a different analysis of spatial justice discourse was presented based on the analysis of the relationship of justice / injustice and space in Tehran city.

Although the document of urban management policy-making of Tehran, at least in its aims and intentions, focused on establishing spatial justice in Tehran city, but there was little consistency between policy goals and institutional-executive decisions, and as a result, the actual effects of these decisions were different from those goals.

Keywords

References

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Urban Planning Knowledge
Volume 3, Issue 3 - Serial Number 8
December 2019
Pages 21-44

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History

  • Receive Date: 04 September 2019
  • Revise Date: 06 October 2019
  • Accept Date: 19 November 2019

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