Abstract
With the publication of The Just City in 2010, Susan Fainstein fundamentally changed the discourse of planning theory. Sociologists of knowledge refer to vehicular ideas as those articulating a concept or theme that propels and organizes the subsequent production of knowledge in new directions. Fainstein’s brief for the just city has had just such a vehicular and transformative effect on the ongoing attempt by planning theorists to produce convincing answers to enduring questions regarding the aims, methods, and justification for planning practice. The book has been widely and enthusiastically reviewed and has stimulated a plethora of workshops, colloquia, conference presentations, and journal articles across several disciplines discussing and debating the argument that Fainstein advances in the text. That argument asserts a proposition that is at once startling in its directness and simplicity and confounding in its complexity and implications. Her thesis, simply stated, is that justice, rather than efficiency, economic development, or any other consideration, should be the “first principle” (13) and “primary criterion” (15) by which to evaluate the outcomes of urban planning practice in the affluent societies of Western Europe and the United States. Fainstein declares her purpose in the book as comprising three interrelated goals: first, “to shift the conversation within discussions of planning and public policy toward the character of urban areas”; second, to “lessen the focus on process that has become dominant within planning theory”; and, third, to “redirect practitioners from their obsession with economic development to a concern with social equity” (19). She has convincingly succeeded on the first count as evidenced by the attention the book has received; has arguably and unnecessarily, in my view, overreached on the second; and, with respect to redirecting planning practice, it is almost certainly too early to tell.
Fainstein advances her argument in four sections. The introduction announces the book’s aim “to develop an urban theory of justice” (5); justifies a focus on justice as reflecting a “widespread consensus” constituting “universal acceptance” (9) of justice as a “universal principle” (10) and a “transcendent ethic” (11); and names equity, democracy, and diversity as the constituent components of such a theory. In chapters 1 and 2, Fainstein makes a forceful case for emphasizing the substantive outcomes of planning; launches a vehement critique of proceduralist planning theory that, in her view, “diverts attention from the substance of policy” (24); and examines the tensions that emerge among equity, democracy, and diversity when seeking just planning outcomes. The next three chapters review practices of urban redevelopment planning in New York, London, and Amsterdam (cities that Fainstein has studied over several decades) to evaluate the attainment of justice as measured along the dimensions of equity, democracy, and diversity within and across the three cities. In the concluding chapter, Fainstein enumerates a list of practices for planners to employ to expand the realization of democracy, diversity, and equity in pursuit of the just city.
In the course of developing her position, Fainstein makes several pivotal decisions that in some cases advance and in others undermine her argument. Her intention, asserted at the outset, to advance both the theory and practice of planning effectively moves beyond the tendency of critical theorists to critique existing practices without offering workable solutions. Fainstein is similarly intent to avoid the complaint often directed at advocates of communicative and participatory planning who fail to identify the specific practices and institutional arrangements required for effective and productive participation. The commitment to practice, however, means that both her analysis and her prescriptions for action, as she fully acknowledges, are “limited to what appears feasible within the present context of capitalist urbanization” (5). Fainstein walks the fine line between pragmatism and accommodation by invoking the concept of “nonreformist reforms” (17) to denote changes in policy and practice that operate within the bounds of structural constraints while introducing conditions conducive to their reformulation. Readers may differ in their opinions as to whether such “realistic utopianism” (20) is more likely to achieve or retard the cause of justice but Fainstein asserts convincingly that the need for action in the present trumps aspirations for future radical change.
More problematic, and ultimately paradoxical given Fainstein’s commitment to informing practice, is the explicit dualism separating the planning process from its substantive outcomes. In the long-standing ethical debate between deontologists and consequentialists—between means and ends—Fainstein insistently prioritizes outcomes over process, sharply distinguishing between “communicative theorists . . . who emphasize . . . democratic decision making as the principal normative standard for planning” and “just-city theorists . . . who instead opt for a substantive concept of justice” (9–10). In pressing this distinction, Fainstein mounts both negative arguments critical of procedural theorists and positive arguments for foregrounding outcomes, while ignoring relational arguments that transcend the duality of means and ends. On the negative side, she vehemently castigates the “naiveté” (34) of deliberative and communicative planning theorists who ignore “the reality of structural inequality and hierarchies of power” (30) and fail to “deal adequately with the classic conundrums of democracy” (29) that impede the possibility of participatory decision making. In cataloging the many failings of democracy—its “illiberal social movements,” “the mass of people (acting) contrary to the public interest,” “citizens (being) misguided and self-serving” (31–32)—Fainstein aligns herself with a long tradition of antidemocratic theorists stretching from the Federalist Papers’ horror of faction to the Lippmann-Dewey debate on “the problem of the public” and culminating in the conservative commentator Richard Posner’s condemnation of democratic debate as “indeterminate and interminable” (Posner 2003, 133; quoted in Westbrook 2005, 192). This is surely an impoverished and truncated view of democracy. More than an avenue for expressing self-interest, democracy exposes participants to the interests of others. As an associational value rather than a self-interested one, a commitment to democracy makes possible the responsibility to others that a commitment to justice requires. Unlike attainment of a just outcome that itself provides no ground for attaining future justice, democracy is a cumulative experience where participation improves one’s capacity and competence for future deliberation (McGowan 2012).
None of this appears in Fainstein’s account and she is plainly ambivalent about the place of democracy in her conceptualization of justice. It is a process, after all, of political decision making and thus contra her subordination of process to outcomes. While she names democracy as a necessary constituent of the just city, much of her discussion of the concept in chapters 1 and 2 critiques its shortcomings concluding, ultimately, that since “the principal test is whether the outcome . . . is equitable, values of democratic inclusion also matter, but not as much” (10). In place of the messiness of democracy, she prefers a form of elite decision making, arguing that planners should not “disregard the possibility that paternalistic and bureaucratic modes of decision making may produce desirable outcomes” and that “insulated decision making may produce more just outcomes than public participation” (32). She approvingly proffers as an example the case of Singapore, which “could be classified as a benevolent despotism (that) despite the limits it places on liberty, and especially on democracy . . . produces a very high quality of life for its citizens” (32).
Missing in this stark dualism of process and outcome is their inevitable relationality. The prioritization of material quality of life over values of liberty and democracy in Singapore represents a judgment that could only have been established through a discursive (even if not democratic) process. While Fainstein presents the gains of the American civil rights movement as a triumph of judicial edict rather than legislative deliberation, both emanated from a prolonged process of democratic protest, contestation, and debate culminating in legislative and judicial enactments that reflected the values and policy priorities articulated within and through that deliberative process. A relational perspective recognizes the complementarity of the two approaches. A deliberative planning process provides the means to discern, evaluate, and debate the value implications of proposed practices of problem definition and the design and implementation of proposed solutions; a just-city perspective provides a substantive language to employ in the course of that deliberation. Neither can suffice without the other, since there can be no outcome without a process to produce it, a process without an outcome is an oxymoron, and every outcome materializes the conditions from which the process continues anew, recognizing that every outcome is provisional and that justice is never attained once and for all. As William James observed, “There can be no final truth in ethics . . . until the last man has had his experience and said his say” (1992, 595; quoted in McGowan 2012, xxi).
True to her substantive commitment, Fainstein concludes the book by listing “the kinds of policies”—affordable housing, small business development, etc.—“likely to increase justice” (166) in the city. The question that remains is why planners and policymakers should be moved to adopt such policies, especially in light of the power imbalances and structural constraints that have prevented their widespread adoption to date. Here is where attention to process is inevitable, for naming justice as an evaluative criterion establishes an agenda for planning but does not ensure its adoption. Also needed are methods of political organizing, strategizing, and persuasion necessary to mobilize a constituency behind the substantive goal of the just city. Notwithstanding Fainstein’s manifest impatience with democratic deliberation, her contribution in The Just City is to provide a compelling argument for employing the language of justice as an evaluative criterion—even the evaluative criterion—within a deliberative planning process. Her work deepens, enriches, and extends deliberative planning theory in complementary rather than antagonistic ways. Like the idea of justice itself, The Just City is not the last word concluding a debate. More important, it is a trenchant, penetrating, and reasoned contribution to precisely that discursive and contested, but necessary and fruitful deliberative process that fuels the hope for progress toward realization of the just city.