a critical evaluation on the concept of justice in planning process

3.5.2.3. Individual, Social and Public Interest
For a meaningful concept of public interest in “social state governed by the rule
of law”, how and by whom the values are created, by whom they are shared and how
this process is organized carry great importance. In this context, a public interest
acceptance disregarding the distribution of national interests within the society and how
they are reflected on the society, will have a property of aiming the legitimating of this
arbitrary and definite process, rather than being a meaningful concept. When this
process is studied from the viewpoint of urban land, it is seen that individual and public
interest at every scale from macro scale plans to the decisions basing on the scale of a
single plot have different contents. Therefore, for the concretization of public interest a
very extended <strong>evaluation</strong> is needed to be done about the balance between individual and
public values. Kele , determining that liberalism being accepted as identical with the
lack of constraint will be most harmful on cities, bases the fact that balance giving
shortage from the viewpoint of urbanization in the last 30 years, is basing on liberalism
not succeeding on providing a balance between individual interests and public interests
(Kele , 1991, 16).
Even though there is no definition about what the public interest in countrywide,
regional and local scales mean, acceptance of city plans as documents which have
public interest properties will only be possible with the establishment of this balance.
These necessities the <strong>evaluation</strong> of the plans from the viewpoint of distribution relations
with an assumption that they are not socially, economically and culturally neutral from
macro to micro scales and that everyone/public will benefit from every intervention
done on physical space. It is impossible to accept the idea that a neutral plan can be
made and a benefit be provided from this plan from the viewpoint of the value of urban
space and urban plot, as mentioned above. From the point urban plot has reached, it is
evident that while plan decisions limit the freedoms of certain groups they on the other
hand increase the benefits of some others. At this point, planning activity giving
decisions on urban plot, evaluates the redistribution mechanisms it defines on urban
space, equalities and rights in an integral consideration and necessities new legal
arrangements and practices within the frame of these <strong>evaluation</strong>s. Within the context of
these <strong>evaluation</strong>s, how the relations between rights, freedoms, equality and interest as
components of justice in legal processes and interventions in the provision of formal
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