Justice-Oriented Reflective Design: Making Justice Actionable in Spatial Planning and Design Practice

This research explores how spatial practitioners can adequately apply justice in their work, without them resorting to a (false) universal conception of justice. To do so, I collaborated with thirteen spatial design research projects. I actively intervened in these projects by stimulating precise formulation of and critical reflection on their guiding conceptions of justice. From observing the designers, I identified possible strategies and challenges linked to this so-called Justice-Oriented Reflective Design. Among other things, it appeared that to successfully apply this approach to justice in design, not only ratio and analysis, but also intuition, emotion, and imagination are pivotal.