Spatial justice and planning : State housing redevelopment in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

The question of how just societies and cities can be organised and achieved has long been central to planning. This study explores the substantive nature of spatial justice and its epistemological significance for planning. The term ‘spatial justice’ emphasizes institutions, policies, and practices involved in formulating the organisation of space and shaping human interactions that produced (un)just geographies. Concerned with both outcome and process, it has the potential to promote justice as both an end to be achieved and a means for achieving desired ends in planning. State housing-led regeneration provides fertile ground for exploring the theory and practice of spatial justice for planning. In conjunction with Soja’s Thirdspace theory, an integrated analytical framework comprising a geographical morphological study, housing policy and plan analysis and embodiment research is established to investigate the spatiality of (in)justice and the (in)justice of spatiality. Spatial justice presents an integrative/unifying theory concerning place, policies, people, and their interplay. The Tāmaki area in Auckland, one of the largest state housing areas in Aotearoa New Zealand, is undergoing rapid redevelopment. Focusing on the delivery of medium-density and mixed tenure housing, the spatial study of the Tāmaki area reveals the changing configuration of built forms, housing policies and plans, as well as residents’ life experiences. The complex layering of spatial-temporal and social landscapes resulting from dynamic spatial processes forms the basis for community characterisation and assessment and provides a new lens to uneven development geographies. Following the principle of equality of opportunity, social housing policies tend to be oriented towards social equity in the New Zealand context. In particular, compact, mixed tenure, and sustainable urban development is regarded as the basis for a just built environment in the broadest sense, one that enables equal accessibility for all. But there are contradictions between the imagined spatiality of justice and individuals’ socialised sensory space. Protecting community character and human rights has motivated social housing tenants’ resistance to regeneration that has produced impactful results in its early stage. The focus on material outcomes as a barometer of success neglects the resident experiences of disempowerment. The current theory and practice of justice is invariably devoid of time and place and deemed to be “non-spatial”. Broadening access to planning processes is yet to be fully realised. Spatial justice supports the formulation of process strategies for fulfiling both valued spatialtemporal outcomes and representational ideas. To achieve just development results, integration of spatial justice strategies into the established planning system is required. In relation to spatial justice studies in other parts of the world, this project not only makes a timely contribution to the search for solutions to the acute planning problems in social housing provision in New Zealand, but also adds a New Zealand dimension to international efforts to promote justice in urban change.