MSD Director's Series
Susan Fainstein
Author and Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design

PLANNERS' DISCOURSE -- TALKING ABOUT JUSTICE

Robin Boyd House
Tuesday 22 October 2013

Much contemporary advice for planners has emphasized participation and communication. It focuses on the planning process rather than on the outcomes of planning. Justifications for action are often in the name of growth and competitiveness, or conversely preservation and blocking growth. Planners, if they wish to contribute to a more just city, need to make judgments regarding the content of various positions and to name justice as a goal, not simply provide information and moderate the discussion. Discourse and outcomes are surely connected, but it is the substantive content of the discourse, not simply the process by which it is conducted, that matters if justice is to be the outcome.

Susan S. Fainstein is a Senior Research Fellow in the Harvard Graduate School of Design; she joined the faculty in 2006 as a professor of urban planning and retired from teaching in 2012. Her book The Just City was published in 2010 by Cornell University Press. Among her other books are The City Builders: Property, Politics, and Planning in London and New York; Restructuring the City; and Urban Political Movements. She has co-edited volumes on urban tourism (The Tourist City and Cities and Visitors), planning theory (Readings in Planning Theory), urban theory (Readings in Urban Theory), and gender (Gender and Planning) and has authored over 100 book chapters and articles in scholarly journals. Her research interests include planning theory, urban theory, urban redevelopment, and comparative urban policy focusing on the United States, Europe, and East Asia. She received the Distinguished Educator Award of the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP), which recognizes lifetime career achievement, the Davidoff Book Award of the ACSP, and has been a resident fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Center for Scholars at Bellagio.

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