Spatial Justice as Analytic Framework

Political theorists have recently become interested in the role of nonhumans in politics, as evinced in the recent literature on “new materialism”. This literature raises questions such as: how do nonhumans participate in politics as more than mere objects, and what implications might this suggest for normative concepts like justice? I explore this question by theorizing and analyzing the concept of spatial justice. The central claim of spatial justice is that the organization of space – a set of material and ideological relations that act on, yet are formed by, social relations – influences the fair ordering of human relations. As such, it provides one window onto the question of nonhumans and politics. I argue that spatial justice is best understood as an analytic lens that illuminates the ways in which “space” - a term denoting the location of things relative to each other – participates in the formation of justice claims. Spatial justice is a concept already deployed in geography and urban planning, yet it is most frequently understood as a normative evaluation: that any particular space is just or unjust. I argue that such an understanding of spatial justice simply adds a not-particularly helpful adjective to some well-worn justice claims – in other words, calling an injustice spatial merely states that it happens “in space.” I argue that when spatial justice is better instead understood as an analytic framework, it illuminates the representative effects of the urban planning process: spatial representations frame justice debates by making certain constituencies – both human and nonhuman – present in the political process. To make this argument, I engage authors in critical geography, political theory, and science and technology studies. I argue that critical environmental scholars and political theorists have much to gain by incorporating spatial justice into their analyses. I examine the controversy around the policy document Detroit Future City (DFC), which literally maps a future for Detroit in which the city’s widespread vacancy is transformed into sustainable uses. Against both critics and boosters of the plan, I argue that DFC’s most important effect is to represent the city in its numerous maps, surveys, and data tables, all of which have already become the subject of debate in the city. DFC visualizes a Detroit where low density neighborhoods are part of a more just city, a marked departure from dominant approaches to urban planning that posit population increase as the solution to Detroit’s planning problems. I argue that although DFC is unlikely to directly guide Detroit’s master plan, development, and investment strategy, it has already influenced policy and activist debates with data and maps that inscribe vacancy into the city. I analyze DFC and its surrounding controversy to argue that only by understanding spatial justice as an analytic lens can DFC be appreciated in this productive light. My theory of spatial justice informs new materialism by emphasizing the capacity for nonhumans to participate in politics. I differentiate this participatory approach from a tendency among new materialists to emphasize the innate capacities of nonhumans to transform human behavior. Against this latter analysis, in which nonhumans are said to disrupt humans’ ethical and political commitments, I argue that nonhumans like spatial relations transform the political alliances that represent them. Thus spatial justice provides a language for analyzing nonhumans' emergent political power.PhDPolitical ScienceUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/143999/1/justwill_1.pd