a critical evaluation on the concept of justice in planning process

urban space. The considered aspects of these actors are demands of right, perceptions of
interest / benefit, equality, liberty / freedom, <strong>evaluation</strong>s of individual-society and the
way they regard land ownership.
1.2. Definition of the Problem
In a general definition as to ‘What Planning is’, planning can be regarded as an
instrument of organizing the urban physical space. What is organized in urban physical
space is the distribution of goods and resources (public and private). The methods,
approaches and tools adopted within the process of this distribution and location entail
the below questions to be asked for the Turkish practice:
Today, does the existing urban structure achieved through the efforts of planning
process in organizing urban space display any results that can be accepted as just? Do
these results represent the ideals of the field of planning discipline? Can the planning
process and its results be depicted as just results arrived through a just process?
Affirmative answers to these questions will cause for examination of what justice is. If
we further on with questions of MacIntyre “…Does justice permit gross inequality of
income and ownership? Does justice require compensatory action to remedy
inequalities which are the result past injustice, even if those who pay the costs of such
compensation had no part in that injustice? Does justice permit or require the
imposition of the death penalty and, if so, for what offences?...”(MacIntyre;1988;1). In
cities of our time, what sort of justice and just processes are meant by the squatter
settlements emerging as ways of shelter; natural disasters 1 caused by insufficiency of
infrastructure; pressures of development adopting the discourse of restricted rights of
ownership in response to demands of healthy natural environments to be sustained for
future generations? In a planning study aimed at encountering these problems, through
what kind a consideration can just distribution of urban opportunities be possible?
These questions referring to justice can be approached in two different ways.
The first one of these is the acceptance of causes and results of the problem as out of
consideration of the planning discipline. With an assent as such, it can be indicated that
the causes and solutions of the problems are related with the institutions and processes
1 Remembering the past experience of Turkey in terms of earthquakes and floods, the subject matter
whether these are natural disasters or not appears to be a different topic of discussion.
3