Sustainability and Social Justice: Urban Urgencies in Compact Neighborhood Planning

Abstract

Social justice and sustainability are two concepts that have evolved in the past two decades to create challenging directions for the field of urban planning. While planners describe sustainability as including environmental, economic and social concerns in theory, numerous studies cite that social justice often gets undercut in practice and that sustainability is implemented to address environmental concerns. This research focuses on sustainability and social justice in order to understand how compact land use planning can advance both. The intent of this research is to explore the relationship between sustainability and social justice and how to advance social justice through compact land use planning. This thesis examines whether or not sustainability includes social justice and how sustainability interacts with social justice in addition to identifying obstacles to advancing social justice through compact land use planning. The recommendations presented will contribute to efforts to identify opportunities that planners can use to advance a sustainability strategy that is inclusive of social justice and complements social justice goals.