The Point of Intervention

“Perfectly even development, complete socio-spatial equality, pure distributional justice, as well as universal human rights are never achievable. Every geography in which we live has some degree of injustice embedded in it, making the selection of sites of intervention a crucial decision.”

The last statement in this sentence is what I find most intriguing from Edward Soja’s writing; deciding where to intervene is the most crucial aspect of working towards spatial justice. The idea of ubiquitous equality is a nice image, but as jaded as it might sound, the reality of our world is that true equality and justice are never achievable; there is not a utopic version of the world that we are trying to achieve. But that does not in any sense mean that we as architects abandon the attempt to improve our surroundings; it’s not a utopia we are looking for, but more a balance of equality and justice. That is why the specific location of an intervention becomes imperative; it is the key in the attempt to create the most evenly equal social areas as possible.

Samuel Mockbee speaks of rural interventions in the American south; Susan Fainstein and Peter Marcuse speak of urban interventions and creating a “just city”. I find the balance between the two to be indicative of the possible success of pinpointing specific areas to implement spatial justice. It brings back to mind our readings on Jane Jacobs and the discussion of “urban acupunctures” to bring life to a city; but in this sense it is rather a universal acupuncture that balances areas into more social and spatial justice.