ABSTRACT
Drawing upon, and extending, the existing work on social justice and cities, people offer five propositions that can be used in evaluations of the justice of public spaces. As it can be seen, these propositions are both integrative and disjunctive. Distributive justice refers to questions of how the wealth, rewards, benefits and burdens of urban life should be distributed to achieve a just city. The related distributional questions of locational disadvantage and affordable access are becoming ever more important as profit-seeking property developers play an increasing role in urban governance in many cities. With respect to public space and social justice, a focus on recognition directs our attention to the norms of use and behavior that are entrenched in the provision and regulation of public spaces. The formation and expression of collective identities is likely to be highly dependent on access to public spaces, where members of a given group can interact with one another.
