Searching for the Just City

"Reading The Just City, one becomes aware that urban scholarship has been inexorably leading towards a book exactly like this one for a long time. These essays synthesize the debates that engaged us in our studies of the 20th-century city, and chart out the intellectual path we will be taking in the 21st."

-- Dennis R. Judd, University of Illinois at Chicago

"Here at last are essays for our times. With the collapse of the neo-liberal order, we must rethink how we can construct a new life in cities around the world, a life based on conceptions of social justice. The essays in this volume are not only state of the art, but are written with passion, providing examples to stir the embers of belief that we can build a better world."

-- John Friedmann, Prof. emeritus UCLA, Hon. Professor, University of British Columbia

"Cities were where the division of labour began. Then planned cities housed the ordered life of bourgeois commerce but excluded generations of women, poor people and migrants from the benefits of urban living. The idealised city was not the just city. Today, difference is recognised in urban discourses but a widening gap separates those who gain from a city’s opportunities and those who are disenfranchised on a global scale. Given an urgent need to understand how urban justice can be produced, this book is timely. It brings together some of the most accomplished commentators in the field. The writing is always incisive, ranging from philosophical discussion to examination of tensions in planning debates and case studies. The book offers a coherent approach without masking complexities, and should be required reading for anyone involved in urban studies, planning and governance."

-- Malcolm Miles, Professor of Cultural Theory, University of Plymouth, UK

"The editors have assembled a thought provoking collection of theoretical and empirical essays that offer a broad introduction to the Just City movement of planners and urbanists. Its editors and contributors take us through a comprehensive analysis of the relationships between justice and the lived urban environment."

-- Herbert J Gans, author, IMAGINING AMERICA IN 2033. Robert S Lynd Prof. Emeritus of Sociology, Columbia University

Notwithstanding the slant of the book toward East Coast secular progressives, this is a provocative collection of articles that readers will find richly rewarding. In the shadow of corporate capitalism and the preoccupation with economic efficiency, in recent decades planners have been almost embarrassed to speak the language of justice. If this book helps to release full-throated calls for urban justice, it will have fulfilled an important function. Todd Swanstrom University of Missouri-St Louis