Mapping social-ecological injustice in Melbourne, Australia: An innovative systematic methodology for planning just cities

Melissa Pineda-Pinto, Christian A. Nygaard, Manoj Chandrabose and Niki Frantzeskaki

Land Use Policy, 2021, vol. 104, issue C

Abstract: Social-ecological justice is an emerging field that argues for nature’s agency, social-ecological awareness, recognition of nature’s capabilities, and participation in decision-making processes. A social-ecological justice perspective lifts the analysis out of a distribution of environmental impacts to humans, to a recognition of social-ecological complexities. However, bringing this perspective to urban planning requires a suite of methods and tools in coordination with existing planning methods that do not address issues of social-ecological justice, or, justice for nature. Drawing from existing methods and tools, this paper presents a novel methodology to define, identify, and map social-ecological injustices in urban landscapes. Three dimensions of social-ecological justice (distribution, recognition, and participation) are operationalised into a set of indicators, which are added to create a Social-Ecological Injustices Index that identifies place hotspots. A fourth dimension, capabilities, is discussed, but not operationalised in the paper. The urban region of Melbourne, which has been undergoing intense urbanisation processes, is used as a case study to test the applicability of this index. The geospatial analysis reveals various degrees of social-ecological injustices across the Melbourne Metropolitan region and unveils the location of the most deprived areas. This methodology can be applied as a systematic and effective way for urban planners and decision-makers to identify and target social-ecological injustice hotspots as areas of prioritisation for urban regeneration with nature-based solutions.

Keywords: Social-ecological justice; Nature; Mapping; Cities; Urban; Urban planning; GIS; Nature-based solutions; Australia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837721000843
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:104:y:2021:i:c:s0264837721000843

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2021.105361

Access Statistics for this article

Land Use Policy is currently edited by Jaap Zevenbergen

More articles in Land Use Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joice Jiang ().