As an extension of environmental justice, landscape justice emphasizes achieving inclusive and equitable planning and design in both built and natural environments, allowing different social groups to enjoy and share landscape resources and benefits more equally. By endowing landscape design with a “just” orientation, landscape justice significantly improves the spatial and environmental benefits while promotes the process of environmental justice. Landscape justice is characterized by its interdisciplinary nature, showing great variability in spatio-temporal scales, site dimensions and attributes, and social groups and scenarios, the research of which urgently requires in-depth dialogues, sincere collaborations, and active explorations among multiple disciplines. We call for enriching the connotation of landscape justice through interdisciplinary perspectives and addressing practical issues, to provide innovative spatial propositions and paths for creating sustainable urban environments and landscapes.
Facing challenges of population decline and fiscal austerity, Japan has implemented a series of initiatives to promote public-private partnerships (PPP) to ensure the sustainability of urban parks and revitalize urban spaces. These initiatives, while alleviating the government's financial burdens on parks, have also raised concerns about the potential erosion of publicness and public interests resulted from the commercialization of public assets. This paper reviews the evolution of Japan's urban park management system after World War Ⅱ—including three phases of being purely public goods, initiating marketization, and diversifying management entities. The functions of parks have continuously enriched, and the construction, management, and operational modes have shifted from government-led towards multi-stakeholder participation, along with expanded funding sources. By examining the PPP types, driving forces, implementation mechanisms and challenges in urban park management, this paper points out that, in different eras and social contexts, the Japanese government has kept adjusting its role to maximize public interests. This has proactively updated the implications of publicness in infrastructure like urban parks, from a post-war opposite of publicness versus privateness on ownership, to the participation of private capital for a higher efficiency, and finally to a community for a stronger regional competitiveness. The reforms of urban park management system in Japan offer significant lessons and insights for urban infrastructure management in other countries and regions.
● Proposes that the evolution of Japan's urban park management system has undergone three phases: being purely public goods, initiating marketization, and diversifying management entities ● Analyzes the implementation forms and driving forces of public-private partnership modes in Japan's urban parks ● Discusses how the Japanese government, by continuously adjusting its role over time, maximizes public interests and promotes the contextual transition of the public nature of urban infrastructure
The construction of a barrier-free environment is an important measure that guarantees the safety, right-of-way, and interests of the disabled, the elderly, and other mobility disadvantaged groups. It is also an indispensable part of the low-carbon urban transportation and a necessary way to protect the rights of mobility disadvantaged groups in green travel. In this paper, the researchers conducted life log surveys on the travels of 10 wheelchair users residing in Beijing with IoT Inspector, a self-developed, wheelchair-mountable intelligent sensing device. Wheelchair users' travel preferences and reasons were then analyzed using the image and textual data from the surveys. Combined with a mapping workshop, a comparative analysis was performed on the bumpiness of sidewalk paving materials. The study found that wheelchair travelers' preferred non-motor lanes over sidewalks; substandard curb ramps, unleveled tree pools, limited access widths, and bumpy pavement were the main problems faced by wheelchair users in sidewalk accessibility. In addition, the study explores the inclusive needs and challenges of non-motorized right-of-way for new transportation means at urban planning and traffic management levels. Based on multi-sourced data, this paper discusses the possibility of assessing urban barrier-free environment and representing a narrative of the needs of mobility disadvantaged groups, so as to provide practical experience and technical support to the improvement strategies of adaptive roads.
Social forestry has emerged as a popular approach to achieving landscape justice by empowering local communities. However, the development and implementation of such programs often face challenges. This paper explores the concept of landscape justice within the context of Indonesian social forestry in two ways. First, it juxtaposes the social forestry program with palm oil plantations to highlight the relationship between environmental initiatives and capital expansion, and the formation of green capitalism. By examining the historical development of social forestry, the paper argues that current political and legal frameworks have facilitated the depoliticization of previously radical, anti-capitalist, and anti-palm oil civil movements, despite notionally "empowering" local communities. Second, the paper interrogates the inclusivity of the social forestry program within local communities, noting that NGOs sometimes label local people as "cooperative" or "stubborn," thus overlooking the pre-existing social tensions. The paper posits that more attention should be given to the social foundations underlying environmental projects and the new eco-social structure arising from environmental governance.
● Reviews the debate surrounding neoliberal environmental projects and the concept of "green capitalism" ● Contextualizes the essence of landscape justice by tracing the local historical and political developments ● Examines environmental projects from both macro-level political economy perspectives and micro-level day-to-day practices ● Investigates the role of environmental NGOs on the ground and the evolving social relations resulting from environmental projects
As social and economic dynamics continue to evolve and the demand for companionship increases, pet ownership has become an increasingly popular lifestyle choice. Pet parks, as a new form of urban public space, are gaining significant attention. This study, grounded in the theory of spatial justice, employs a combination of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to evaluate four representative pet parks in Hong Kong, China. It explores how pet parks, as inclusive green infrastructure in high-density environments, contribute to urban community well-being and broader spatial justice. The study reveals the conflicts between pet owners and non-pet owners regarding the rights to use public spaces, examining how to guarantee the spatial rights of specific groups while avoiding harm to others. The findings indicate that green space availability, sociability and participation, walkability, safety, and flexibility in pet parks play a positive role in achieving urban spatial justice. However, pet parks also face challenges related to social exclusion and safety, requiring a balance between promoting community integration and ensuring public safety. This study offers valuable insights for the development of pet parks, the creation of vibrant and diverse public spaces, and the promotion of harmonious human-animal environments in cities across China and other Asian countries.
● Applies the spatial justice theoretical framework to the study of pet parks in an Asian city for the first time ● Explores the contribution of pet parks as inclusive green infrastructure in high-density environments to urban community well-being and spatial justice ● Points out that the frequency of pet park use is significantly correlated with its proximity, accessibility, affordability of use, and daily usage duration ● Highlights the green space availability, sociability and participation, walkability, safety, and flexibility in pet parks as factors conducive to realizing urban spatial justice
Design increasingly plays a pivotal role in achieving justice for all. However, there are often gaps between visions and implementation due to the variety of factors and stakeholders involved in design practice. Through literature review and a keyword co-occurrence analysis, this paper investigates current landscape justice research and identifies the distinguishing concerns in design, and highlights the importance of systematic thinking in achieving landscape justice. By examining the practices of the British company Building Design Partnership (BDP), a multinational design company, this paper identifies BDP’s three key design principles as experiences can be followed for landscape justice: design for inclusion, design for resilience, and design for future ecosystems. The paper also addresses potential challenges and conflicts in implementing landscape justice across different contexts and highlights multinational design companies’ efforts to mediate between various stakeholders. Finally, this paper demonstrates that design companies can contribute to 1) bridging social and environmental justice through landscape design, 2) achieving the visions promoted by scholars, 3) identifying and deploying diverse approaches to achieving landscape justice with their sensitivity to practical problems, and 4) fostering integrated feedback loops via both top-down and bottom-up approaches to ensure effective implementation of landscape justice.
● Investigates current landscape justice research and identifies the gap between theories and design practice through a keyword co-occurrence analysis ● Identifies BDP’s essential design principles for achieving landscape justice as experiences can be followed ● Highlights the pivotal role of multinational design companies in effectively communicating with stakeholders and integrating justice in design across diverse contexts
The Niagara Escarpment, a 440-million-year-old landform, cuts through a property owned by the University of Toronto in Caledon, Ontario in Canada. The property juxtaposes impacts from historical quarrying activity which burrowed directly into the Escarpment’s slope, the greater context of the region’s urban development demands, and the Escarpment’s identity as an ancient geological formation, ecological refugium, and old-growth forest housing ancient species such as Thuja occidentalis.
This project explores the university’s responsibility in advocating for the protection of the Escarpment’s unique ecologic conditions, including the distinct cliff ecosystems and the novel successional plant communities evolving on sites of former quarry activities. Interventions on the trail system, cave bridges and lookouts, and the boardwalk and path system, along with guidance of signage and trail markers, will bring visitors to areas where former quarry activities sculptured the Escarpment’s limestone faces and are now reclaimed by a system of lush novel wetlands and habitats in evolutionary stages. Connecting to a system of existing public trails, this project leverages the university’s educational and recreational objectives to form new strategic partnerships with local conservancy groups, aiming at monitoring and managing access and habitat protection.
● Indigenous-led conservation efforts and partnerships with local conservancy groups are emphasized to enhance sustainability and stewardship ● Interventions were proposed on the trail system, cave bridges and lookouts, and the boardwalk and path system ● The interventions aim to balance the site’s educational and recreational use with the preservation of its delicate ecosystems
