Normative Constructions of Spatial Justice

ABSTRACT. The objective of this paper is to emphasize the importance of the spatial dimension of societal processes, the challenge of social cohesion, and social segregation in European cities. We shall focus here on the concept of territorial cohesion, the multiple socio-spatial patterns of European cities, and the European discourse on spatial planning and/or territorial governance.JEL Classification: D63, A13, Z13Keywords: social cohesion, spatial justice, societal process1. IntroductionIn this paper we are particularly interested in exploring the geographies of social cohesion, the spatial dimension of social processes, and the social fabric of European cities. Our aim in this article is to develop a research agenda for examining the current focus on the spatial lay-outs of inequalities in European cities, the construction of the socio-spatial order, and the political dimension of social cohesion.2. EU Spatial Planning and Territorial CohesionDabinett and Richardson analyze the Europeanization of strategic planning practices1 in a specific territory, and the consequent implications for spatial justice: the normative construct of polycentric urban development has been underpinned by the fundamental spatial organizing principles of frictionless mobility and balanced regional development.2Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos notes that a spatial turn can be observed in the law that negotiates its turning in ways that move away from spatiality (law 's spatial turn promises to bring forth a space within the law): geography as a discourse can facilitate law's conceptualization of space,3 and space beyond metaphor vies with the traditionally conceived abstraction of the law. Space forces law into dealing with an uncertainty that emerges from the spatial characteristics of simultaneity, disorientation, materiality and exclusionary corporeal emplacement. We should rethink of the novel unpredictability of space that has flowed into law, and reclaim the concept of spatial justice from a socially diffusing, geographically applied concept of regionalism, while making a case for it from within the law. PhilippopoulosMihalopoulos supports a full spatialization of law, a full embracement of law 's emplaced concreteness: space forces the law to turn toward itself4 judge its own judgments, and question its ethics (the law is threatened by the expanses of contingency opened up by space) - space for law is not (just) jurisdiction, ideality or geography. Space can be considered in terms of its material particularity, and in terms of its indifferent universality as a gesture ofuncontained violence, brings an awareness of (other) spaces, both within and beyond the reach of the law, and is a demand for a radical conception of justice, a spatial justice . Empirical evidence produced by previous studies and this one has suggested that spatial justice needs to operate with a concept of space that transcends the regional, insists on the coincidence between occupied space and body trace, has to be thought in terms of embodiment and spatiality, and should be sought between law and space. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos puts it that the spatial turn is a bringing forth in an ethical reciprocity of hospitality. Law is a concrete abstraction, characterized by its paradox of materiality and immateriality, whereas law's internal conflict between the universal and the particular is forcefully tested in space. The law invites space to become part of the legal corpus law 's spatial turn is the process of awareness of law 's always-already spatiality), the law has to act through its limitations and despite its own limits, and in its spatial turn, the law is faced with the task to conceptualize a space proper to the law. "The interest in spatiality has increased vertiginously. The law has moved in a spatial direction, progressively discovering its situatedness, its terrain. The law now constructs itself as a location in a social net of spaces. …