Justice and the American Metropolis

Today’s American cities and suburbs are the sites of “thick injustice”—unjust power relations that are deeply and densely concentrated as well as opaque and seemingly intractable. Thick injustice is hard to see, to assign responsibility for, and to change.

Identifying these often invisible and intransigent problems, this volume addresses foundational questions about what justice requires in the contemporary metropolis. Essays focus on inequality within and among cities and suburbs; articulate principles for planning, redevelopment, and urban political leadership; and analyze the connection between metropolitan justice and institutional design. In a world that is progressively more urbanized, and yet no clearer on issues of fairness and equality, this book points the way to a metropolis in which social justice figures prominently in any definition of success.

Contributors: Susan S. Fainstein, Harvard U; Richard Thompson Ford, Stanford U; Gerald Frug, Harvard U; Loren King, Wilfrid Laurier U; Margaret Kohn, U of Toronto; Stephen Macedo, Princeton U; Douglas W. Rae, Yale U; Clarence N. Stone, George Washington U; Margaret Weir, U of California, Berkeley; Thad Williamson, U of Richmond.

Clarissa Rile Hayward is associate professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis.

Todd Swanstrom is Des Lee Professor of Community Collaboration and Public Policy Administration at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Thick Injustice
Clarissa Rile Hayward and Todd Swanstrom

I. The Roots of Injustice in the American Metropolis
1.Property-Owning Plutocracy: Inequality and American Localism
Stephen Macedo
2.Public Reason and the Just City
Loren King
3.Public Space in the Progressive Era
Margaret Kohn

II. Rethinking Metropolitan Inequality
4.Two Cheers for Very Unequal Incomes: Toward Social Justice in Central Cities
Douglas W. Rae
5.Beyond the Equality–Efficiency Tradeoff
Clarence N. Stone

III. Planning for Justice
6.Redevelopment Planning and Distributive Justice in the American Metropolis
Susan S. Fainstein
7.Justice, the Public Sector, and Cities: Relegitimating the Activist State
Thad Williamson

IV. Justice and Institutions
8.Voting and Justice
Gerald Frug
9.The Color of Territory: How Law and Borders Keep America Segregated
Richard Thompson Ford
10.Creating Justice for the Poor in the New Metropolis
Margaret Weir

Contributors
Index