Rapid urbanisation, growing process of globalisation, and the rise of neoliberalism to a hegemonic status, have culminated in the omnipresence of geographically uneven developments and their associated socio-spatial challenges regarding racial segregation, deprivation, stigmatisation, and degradation, in urban settings worldwide. In reaction to this, the search for justice has been a powerful rallying cry for contemporary politicians, activists, and academics. European and North American cities, among others, have initiated urban re-development schemes to mitigate the burden of urban injustice, and in academia social and spatial (in)justice in cities has been the focus of scrutiny in recent decades in philosophy and urban planning disciplines. In this context, the aim of the project is to explore to what extent re-development projects at the neighbourhood scale contribute to achieving socially just and fair environments, and who benefits from these re-developments.
Bayview-Hunters Point in San Francisco is an urban area in San Francisco that historically suffers from different types of socio-economic problems such as unemployment, crime, displacement, health issues, etc. It is currently under massive re-development that aims at building around 12,000 houses and several thousand feet office, recreational, and commercial space. Starting from mid 1990s, the Navy has conducted clean-up activities dividing the site into different parcels, and the City has prepared plans for re-development. Recently it was revealed that long-term clean-up activities managed by a multi-national company and supervised and overseen by multiple state and federal governmental bodies and regulatory agencies were botched and fraud. These revelations sparked off intense debates around the question of urban and environmental justice at the neighbourhood. The aim of the project was exploring the history of injustice, investigating re-production of urban injustice over time, and studying discursive conflict between the community and city. On the one hand, it analysed the way government and regulatory agencies argued that the decontamination process has been done accurately, that re-development project offers new opportunities for the community members and promises a more just environment, and on the other hand, investigated how the community members and activists challenged the dominant argumentation and called for a transparent clean-up and more socially equitable future for the neighbourhood.
The main objectives of the research included: investigating discursive aspects of urban justice and the state of the art in urban planning; developing a framework for evaluating dimensions of injustice in urban re-development projects; carrying out intensive fieldwork including, site observation, participant observation, interview, archival research, and document analysis; and finally producing a documentary film that narrates re-production of urban injustice in case study neighbourhoods.
