Download Equity and Sustainability

Equity and Sustainability
Roseland and Equity
• North/South comparison … fairness
• The developed nations need to consider
‘our own poor’ …
• Definitional: incorporates an ‘inescapable’
commitment to social equity …
Why Equity?
• Why is social equity a dimension of
sustainability?
What is Equity?
• Normative: something we ought to have
• Distributional and rights-based ethics
Ethical Systems and Equity
• Equity is usually defined as fairness
• Two kinds of fairness
– Procedure: procedural ethics (rights-based)
– Outcome: consequential ethics (utilitarian
and or distributive eg. Rawls)
Fairness in Procedure
• Participation in decision-making
• Democratic governance at the national
level
• Representation at all levels, stakeholder
participation at local levels
Fairness in Outcome
• Consequential idea of fairness
• Distributional
• Social systems with ethical consequence
– Economics
– Planning, public administration and law
Ideas of Equity
• Utilitarianism and equity …
– Greatest good for the greatest number
– But in most operational definitions, it is the
sum not the distribution that is calculated
• Libertarian ethics also have distributional
content e.g. Nozick (morally relevant)
• Rawl’s ‘Justice as Fairness’
Liberal Ethics
• Free, equal and autonomous person
• Kantian categorial: Do not do to another
• Individual ultimate object of moral concern
– it makes a difference to choose to live a life
worth living
– There are different ideas of the good
– The individual as source of change
• Procedural involvement, choice, equality
Rawls’ Principles
• Attempt to combine rights-based with
consequential theories (can’t have one
without the other)
First principle:
• Each person is to have an equal right to
the most extensive system of equal basic
liberties compatible with a similar system
of liberty for all
Rawls’ Second Principle
• Social and economic inequalities are to be
arranged to the greatest benefit of the
least advantaged …
• Equal distribution of both liberties and
goods … unless an unequal distribution is
to the advantage of those least favored
Question
• 1. What are the consequential and
procedural norms in current planning and
development practice?
• 2. What are the consequential and
procedural norms in SC in the readings we
have done so far?
Environmental Equity
• Currently, environmental equity and
inequity approximates larger patterns of
social equity and inequity
• Environmental justice movement, national
and international
• Two elements to equity: participation and
distribution
Intergenerational Equity
• Sounds solely utilitarian/consequential
• Where is the dimension of autonomy?
• ‘dictatorship of the present’ …
• Jefferson “the earth belongs in usufruct to
the living” (implies no right to harm)
Next Class
Presentations: Urban Community Redev.
and Big Ideas
• Community: Readings for next week
• Putnam 1995 Bowling Alone
– on reserve or online
• Blanco 1995 Community and the Four
Jewels of Planning
– On reserve (articles, from a book)