Justice-Oriented Urban Planning
Examining how digital infrastructures distribute benefits and burdens across diverse communities
What is Justice-Oriented Urban Planning?
Justice-Oriented Urban Planning focuses on defining, assessing, and integrating equitable public participation in urban planning and institutional decision-making. Drawing on comparative urbanism and digital justice, this research examines how urban and “smart” infrastructures distribute benefits and burdens across diverse groups and communities. This work contributes practical evaluation logics used across scholarly research and professional practice.
Current Projects
Social Justice in the Smart City
Social Justice in the Smart City is an interdisciplinary working research group focused on cross-disciplinary inquiry into the social and environmental justice implications of smart city technologies, policies, and practices.
Highlighted Publications and Work
Digital (In)justice in the Smart City
This edited collection of essays and interviews explores sources of injustice in urban digital technologies and envisions what alternative, more inclusive smart cities might look like.
Additional Related Publications
Book Chapters
Fast, V., Rogers, N., and Burns, R. (2023). Toward the Democratization of Geospatial Data: Evaluating Data Decisioning Practices. In Kent, A. and Specht, D. (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Geospatial Technologies and Society. Taylor & Francis Group.
Burns, R., Fast, V., and Mackinnon, D. (2023). Toward Urban Digital Justice: The Smart City as an Empty Signifier. In Mackinnon, D., Burns, R., and Fast, V. (Eds). Digital (In)justice in the Smart City. University of Toronto Press.
Academic Journal Publications
Nowak, M., Dühr, S., Peña, S., Batsuuri, B., Fast, V., Fidélis, T., Gagakuma, D., He, Z., Khavarian, A., Legutko-Kobus, P., De Marchi Moyano, B., Sugar, M., Martins Peres, O., Blaszke, M. (2024). An International Comparison of the Scope and Instruments of Local Spatial Planning. Town Planning Review. 95(2). https://doi.org/10.3828/tpr.2023.4
Burns, R., Fast, V., Levenda, A, and Miller, B. (2021). Between Provincializing and Worlding Smart Cities. Urban Studies, 58(3), 461-470. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098020975982
Guo, J., Fast, V., +Teri, P., & Calvert, K. (2020). Integrating Land-Use and Renewable Energy Planning Decisions: A Technical Mapping Guide for Local Government. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 9(5), 324. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi9050324
Blue, G., Rosol, M., and Fast, V. (2019). Justice as Parity of Participation: Enhancing Arnstein’s Ladder Through Fraser’s Justice Framework. Journal of the American Planning Association. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2019.1619476
Khakh, A., Fast, V., Shahid, R. (2019). Spatial Accessibility to Primary Healthcare Services by Multimodal Means of Travel: Synthesis and Case Study in the City of Calgary. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 16(2), 170. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16020170