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Identity and Inequality: Race and Space in Planning

Article  in  Planning Theory and Practice · December 2001

DOI: 10.1080/14649350120096811

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Planning Theory & Practice, Vol. 2, No. 3, 261± 275, 2001

Identity and Inequality: Race and

Space in Planning
ERIC J. HEIKKILA

ABSTRACT Planners’ concerns for spatial equity and for racial equity are expressed tangibly
through legislation designed to promote regional development, enterprise zones, af® rmative
action, and in other spheres of practice. Equity concerns take on heightened meaning where issues
of space and race intersect, such as inner-city revitalization or environmental justice. This article
explores the underlying basis for issues of social justice in the context of race and space, leading
to two principle ® ndings. First, there is a tight correspondence between the role of race and space
in the social construction of identity and corresponding formulations of social justice. This point
is demonstrated using ® ve diverse examples from the realm of practice. Second, there is a danger
of misapplication of principles of social justice where the implicit dimensions of one problem
sphere are applied to another. This point is illustrated with two examples; a defunct World Bank
proposal to marketize waste disposal and an effort in California to restore racial equity in public
university admissions through spatially mediated interventions.

Introduction
Two distinct yet clearly interrelated facets of inequality have emerged as central
concerns of the planning profession during the latter half of the past century, both at the
level of practice and at the level of scholarly and philosophical debate. In hindsight,
David Harvey’s Social Justice and the City (1973) marks a watershed point in the planning
literature, with an increasingly voluminous ¯ ow of scholarship now situated directly
downstream from his call for a more just and humane urban planning focus. With
momentum drawn from the burgeoning civil rights movement, a focus on issues of racial
inequality moved to the fore, and an explicit concern for spatial inequality also become
more pronounced at this time. In part, issues of spatial inequality were intertwined with
clearly identi® able issues of race, for example through the `problem of the inner city’.
However, spatial inequality issues also lay at the heart of other regional development
concerns, for example as expressed in the Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1965,
that could not be so readily reduced to racial equivalents.
A central premise of this article is that it is important to understand the extent to
which there is a substantial and substantive overlap linking dual concerns with spatial
and racial inequality. This importance stems from two considerations. First, similarity
between these two dimensions of inequality may offer potential for insights gleaned
from one to be transferred `across’ to the other. Conversely, attempts to draw lessons
inappropriately (i.e. where the overlap is more apparent than real) may be misleading,

Eric J. Heikkila, School of Policy, Planning, and Development, University of Southern California, Los Angeles,
CA 90089-0626, USA. Email: heikkila@usc.edu

1464-9357 Print/1470-000X On-line/01/030261-15 Ó 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/ 14649350120096811
262 E. J. Heikkila

thus resulting in faulty policy analysis and prescriptions. Two central conclusions will be
derived from this approach:
(1) The role of human identity is a central premise upon which both our conceptions of
racial inequality and spatial inequality are de® ned. Opposing views about (for
example) af® rmative action derive directly from differing conceptions about the
nature of human identity. As will be seen, the same holds true for a wide range of
issues bearing on social justice and equity.
(2) Leaving assumptions about identity construction implicit leads all too easily to
ambiguous or even contradictory policies regarding social justice. This pitfall is
especially prevalent where issues of spatial and racial inequality are conjoined, for
the super® cial correspondences between the two can be misleading.
The remainder of this article explicates these two conclusions at some length and
assesses their implications for planning practice. The next section previews the basic
argument in conceptual terms using visual and mathematical symbols of representation.
The following section explores the ontological nexus between the social construction of
identity and corresponding notions of social justice and equality. This nexus is illustrated
in the context of ® ve distinctive examples from the realm of practice, including: (i) a
former California Governor’s Executive Order repealing af® rmative action programmes in
California in 1995; (ii) de facto policies of ghettoization; (iii) recent protest action against
the World Trade Organization and other mainstream international planning and
development institutions; (iv) the Appalachia Regional Development Act of 1965; and (v) the
phenomenon of enterprise zones. A practical implication of this nexus is that misconcep-
tions about the underlying premises of identity construction can lead to faulty policy
formulations. This point is illustrated in the next section with two speci® c examples from
practice; (i) a leaked internal World Bank memo advocating the commodi® cation of
environmental degradation; and (ii) California Governor Gray Davis’s attempt to use
spatial mechanisms to reduce racial inequality. The ® nal section provides concluding
observations about the theoretical ® ndings regarding issues of spatial and racial in-
equality, and implications for planning practice.

Representing Inequality
Before proceeding with an examination of several speci® c cases drawn from planning
practice that illustrate the central points of this article, it is useful to preview the
argument in more conceptual terms. Figure 1 depicts two alternative allocations of
wealth. On the left-hand side, poverty (represented by smaller bars) is con® ned to one
of two races (represented by colour in Figure 1), and it is also con® ned to one of two
regions or neighbourhoods (represented by `A’ and `B’ in Figure 1). Thus, in the ® rst
allocation, poverty is fully segregated both by place and by race. In contrast, on the
right-hand side, both races and both places experience the same degree of poverty.
Now, the central question is: should one be indifferent to these two allocations? From
one perspective, which is consistent with most neoclassical formulations of social
welfare, one would indeed be indifferent because the two allocations are indistinguish-
able from one another. In both allocations, half of the individuals are poor while half are
wealthy. If each individual is given the same weight regardless of race or place, then there
is nothing to distinguish one allocation from the next. On the other hand, for a notion
of social justice that is ® ltered or mediated through socially constructed group identities,
there are additional dimensions of inequality introduced on the left-hand side, where
 Identity and Inequality 263

Figure 1. Segregated and mixed poverty.

Key: height of bar: wealth indicator
colour of bar: race indicator
`A’ and `B’: place indicator

poverty now assumes additional spatial and racial meanings. To reiterate the central
point, the manner in which we formulate identity has a direct bearing on how we
perceive questions of social justice.
The same point can be expressed in more notational terms. Models of social justice
stemming from the neoclassical or individualist view are imbued with a utilitarian logic
whereby aggregate welfare is computed as a function (often a straightforward sum-
mation) of individual utilities. While individuals in this conception may have racially or
spatially bound identities, their own place in the analytical framework is based com-
pletely on their role as individuals. In notational terms, the general form of this calculus
of inequality is
v 5 f(N) 5 f(n1, n2, ¼ , nk ) (1)
where each ni records income, wealth, utility or some other aspect of inequality for a
speci® c individual in the population. In this representation, individuals will vary in
terms of the particular values they record for the attribute in question, and these
attribute values may in fact be `coloured’ by race or place, but each one is represented
fully and individually within the function f(N). Standard measures of inequality such as
the Gini-index or standard deviations conform to this view. As will be seen, then-Gov-
ernor Pete Wilson’s preamble for the enactment of legislation in 1995 to repeal
af® rmative action measures in California is an almost perfect articulation of this
atomistic conception of individual human identity and its implications for social justice.
Postmodern writers, in contrast, aim to `deconstruct’ prior conceptions of identity and
`reconstruct’ them in ways that challenge their presumed ® xity of nature. Planning and
geography literature in the tradition of Lefebvre (1974), Soja (1989, 1996), and Harvey
(1989, 1996) emphasizes the ¯ uidity of identity in the context of historical, social and
264 E. J. Heikkila

spatial in¯ uences. Reality itself is socially constructed, and identity in turn is constructed
within this subjective frame of reality. As Harvey (1989, p. 214) puts it, ª Symbolic
orderings of space and time provide a framework for experience through which we learn
who or what we are in societyº . Conceptions of social justice derived from this
perspective are more geared to socially endogeneous identities and cannot be so neatly
encapsulated into an individually based calculus of the form expressed in equation 1
because individual identities are dissolved, fragmented, or subsumed by other represen-
tations of identity, including but certainly not limited to place-based and race-based
identities. In these latter cases, empirical measures of economic inequality may be
oriented to groups or categories of individuals as follows:
v 5 f[g(N A), g(N B), ¼ , g(N Z)] (2)
where each summary statistic g( ) encapsulates the information that is to be compared
across categories. For example, if N A represents the set of all African-Americans, then
g(N A) may compute median income for this group. The datum for each individual
member of N A may have been used in calculating the sub-index g(N A), but those
individual data are now subsumed in the comparison between categories.

Identity and Equity in Planning Practice

It is useful to explore how the somewhat abstract arguments from the preceding sections
translate in terms of contemporary planning practice. To this end ® ve sets of examples
are introduced, as summarized in Table 1, where each example set comprises (i) a
particular social construct of identity; (ii) a corresponding construction of social justice;
and (iii) an example from the realm of practice that illustrates the corresponding
connection between identity and equity as asserted in the ® rst conclusion prefaced in the
Introduction. The ® rst example from planning practice is an Executive Order repealing
af® rmative action statutes in the State of California, as a demonstration of atomistic
individualism linked to Benthamite utilitarianism. The second example from planning
practice, de facto `ghettoization’, illustrates how a `separate but equal’ doctrine of social
justice derives from a social construction of `the Other’. The third example from the
realm of practice is radical civil disobedience of the type that has challenged the
hegemony of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other mainstream
institutions of global planning and development. The fourth example is the Appalachia
Regional Development Act of 1965, which links notions of regional identity to issues of
uneven development. The ® fth example, the enterprise zone phenomenon, illustrates
how social justice issues come into play over a discrete unit of geographic space. These
examples are by no means exhaustive, but they should be suf® cient to at least clarify the
import of the argument that, as a matter of practice, spatial and/or racial identity
questions lie at the core of one’s approach to social justice issues.

Table 1. Identity, social equity, and planning practice

Realm of practice Identity construct Social justice construct

Repeal of af® rmative action Atomistic individualism Benthamite utilitarianism

De facto ghettoization The `Other’ Separate but equal doctrine
Radical civil disobedience Postmodern identities Radical justice
Appalachia Act of 1965 Macro regional identity Regional equality
Enterprise zones Discrete spatial identity Spatial equality
 Identity and Inequality 265

Individual Identity and Af® rmative Action

Executive Order W-124± 95 by California’s then-Governor Peter Wilson in 1995 was
symbolic of a populist backlash by a segment of the state’s population in response to a
steady accumulation of af® rmative action legislation over preceding years. The language
used in the preamble to his Executive Order is very explicit in its linkage between a
particular approach to identity formulation and its corresponding notion of social justice
(emphases added):
Whereas, it is government’s duty to promote the belief that Americans who
work hard and play by the rules can, on the basis of their individual merit, win
for themselves and their families the deserved rewards of excelling in an
honest competition for a job, for a contract, or for a place in an institution of
higher education; and ¼
Whereas, we must have zero tolerance for discrimination of any kind and
must vigorously and conscientiously enforce the laws that protect against
discrimination to achieve our goal of a truly color-blind society; and
Whereas, the continuation of [race-based] preferential treatment programs
which bene® t an individual who has not suffered discrimination at the expense
of an individual who has not engaged in discrimination is divisive, inconsist-
ent with the principle of basic fairness, and fundamentally wrong ¼
¼ the Executive Order goes on to repeal a range of af® rmative action policies affecting
employment, education, and other domains of state authority.
This particular political discourse on racial inequality is thus framed in terms of
individual rights (and individualistic identities) and equal opportunities. Those who
oppose af® rmative action policies, for example, emphasize equal opportunity on the
basis of comparable individual merit. The language of the preamble makes clear the
view that the bene® t that might be gained (through the continuation of af® rmative action
policies) by any one individual ª who has not suffered discriminationº would not be
justly compensated by the loss to another individual ª who has not engaged in discrimi-
nationº . This perspective is intrinsically utilitarian in the tradition of John Stuart Mill
and the Benthamites whose calculus of social welfare was summarized earlier. If one
person’s gain is not suf® cient to compensate for another person’s loss, then aggregate
welfare is diminished. This conforms precisely to the logic of equation 1, and the
example as a whole provides a strong nexus between atomistic conceptions of individual
identity and utilitarian views of social justice in the context of af® rmative action policies.

`The Other’: Separate but Equal?

For the better part of a century after the abolition of slavery in the US a `separate but
equal’ philosophy prevailed.1 In practice this meant that strict lines of segregation were
maintained in terms of occupations, places of residence, education, and social inter-
change. The term `separate but equal’ notwithstanding, this arrangement led to a
markedly uneven development (as depicted on the left-hand side of Figure 1, in stylized
form) in terms of economic status, education, social mobility and life prospects for blacks
relative to their white counterparts. This bifurcated character of American society also
created a deep divisiveness, not only between racial groups but also between those
holding differing views on the moral dilemmas presented by this situation.
266 E. J. Heikkila

The separate but equal doctrine of justice is rooted in a particular conception of

identity: that of `the Other’, where the reference is to people who are in some way alien
to the subject viewer. While a resilient strain of racism can be traced throughout the
history of the construction of the Other, the underlying alienation may also be motivated
by differences in creed, language, gender, sexuality, or other de® ning characteristics of
identity. Edward Said’s Orientalism is a classic exposition of how the Other (those of
near-oriental cultures in his treastise) is constructed through the guise of scholarship. As
Said describes it, the body of scholarship about the Other, reveals more about the
paranoia of those who create it than it does about those who are purportedly its object
of study. Historically, according to Larrain (1994), the Other emerges (ironically) as an
outgrowth of a modernistic conception of universalism, complete with universal mea-
sures of progress and development. Perceived deviations from this mould were ex-
plained in terms of `backwardness’, and racially laden constructions of the Other were
developed to organize `our’ identities relative to `theirs’. This connection between race
and socially constructed identity is poignantly summarized by Said (1979, p. 226):
Being a White Man was therefore an idea and a reality. It involved a reasoned
position towards both the white and the non-white worlds ¼ Being a White
Man, in short, was a very concrete manner of being-in-the-world, a way of
taking hold of reality, language, and thought.
The issues of space and race are strongly conjoined in relation to the Other. As a general
proposition, according to Soja (1996, p. 46), ª there is no unspatialized social realityº , and
in the context of the Other,
`We’ and `they’ are dichotomously spatialized and enclosed in an imposed
territoriality of apartheids, ghettos, barrios, reservations, colonies, fortresses,
metropoles, citadels, and other trappings ¼ (p. 87).
Hence, race is spatialized and space is racialized, as race and space become congruent
expressions of the Other’s identity. `The ghetto’ and `the inner city’ are spatial manifes-
tations of a racial phenomenon. Likewise, the construction of contemporary black
identity is in large measure a racial manifestation of a spatial phenomenon. Both are
expressions of the Other. As Harvey (1996, p. 264) puts it, ª location and bounding are
important if not vital attributes for the de® nition of the objects, events and relationships
existing in the world around us ¼ The relationship between `self’ and `other’ [is always]
a spatio-temporal constructionº .
Paul Jargowsky (1996) addresses this question in his study on Poverty and Place. He
heeds us to be mindful of the Kerner Commission’s warning that we are becoming ª two
societies ¼ separate and unequalº , arguing that con¯ icts between haves and have-nots
are especially acute when the groups are geographically and socially isolated from one
another (p. 213). William Julius Wilson (1996, p. 112), also refers to ª concentration
effectsº and the lack of a ª social bufferº arising from situations where, as in Figure 1,
poverty is concentrated in particular neighbourhoods or places. Douglas Massey &
Nancy Denton (1993, p. 150) point to structural linkages between geographic locations
and locations in the social order whereby segregation creates the context of an ongoing
`oppositional culture’. Space matters because it mediates the experiences of people in
places, and further, it shapes the structure of the opportunity set available to them.
When this transpires to create a stagnant population pool of poverty cut off from the
mainstream, the poverty deepens and becomes more profound in character and more
potent in its ability to sustain itself over time. Isolation, through `Othering’, begets
 Identity and Inequality 267

persistence. The very act of constructing the Other belies the presumed justice doctrine
of separate but equal, and the inner city ghetto is a perfect expression of this fact.

Postmodern Identities and Radical Justice

In recent years a heightened level of activism has made its presence felt through protests
and disruptions of Board meetings of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund,
the World Trade Organization and other mainstream institutions of global planning and
development. These acts of `rage against the machine’ are an expression of deeply rooted
hostility to a perceived era of modernistic instrumental reason permeating ever deeper
and more extensively into the global order, and in this sense they are expressions of
postmodern angst, where the latter is more than merely anti-modernism. The postmod-
ern condition is one of increasing fragmentation, dislocation, and `decentering’ of
identity. Rejecting the `® xity of identities’ or `totalizing discourses’ inherent in modern-
istic conceptions, postmodern identities ª shift within a changing context, dependent
upon the point of reference ¼ Identities are ¯ uid sites that can be understood differently
depending on the vantage point of their formation and functionº .2 This postmodern
condition is vigorously reinforced by an increasingly potent and rapidly accelarating
space-time compression (Harvey, 1989) that enables individuals to formulate their identi-
ties while drawing from a multitude of times and places.
The ¯ uidity of identity in this postmodern conception has its counterpart in questions
of social justice and political involvement. This proposition is articulated, again by David
Harvey (1989, p. 271), in a central principal: ª the more uni® ed the space, the more
important the qualities of the fragmentations become for social identity and actionº . This
same theme is echoed by Edward Soja, whose ª Third Spaceº becomes a referential
staging ground for organizing or reconstructing identities and alliances within the
context of increasing fragmentation. He cites the feminist black author bell hooks, who
neatly expresses the con¯ uence between postmodern identities and corresponding
political action to promote social justice:
Postmodern culture with its decentered subject can be the space where ties
are severed or it can provide the occasion for new and varied forms of
bonding. To some extent, ruptures, surfaces, contextuality, and a host of other
happenings create gaps that make space for oppositional practices ¼ 3
The radical political action seen at the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle are
wholly consistent with this postmodern perspective of identity. Decentered or marginal-
ized subjects ® nd new and varied forms of bonding, reinforced by the internet and other
space-time compressing technologies, to make new spaces for oppositional practices. As
with the previous two examples, identity and social justice are conjoined in the realm of
practice.

Appalachia
The Appalachian Regional Development Act (ARDA) of 1965 in the US is an important
example of regional planners’ explicit concern with inequality across a spatial dimension,
and so provides a good opportunity to examine how different conceptions of spatially
constructed identity4 correlate with conceptions of social justice and planning practice. In
its review of ARDA, the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress (CRS,
1985, pp. 1± 2) notes that ª throughout much of the twentieth century, events occurred
268 E. J. Heikkila

which caused Americans to perceive that Appalachia was a separate region isolated
from the rest of the country ¼ [and which] continued to lag economically far behind the
rest of an increasingly prosperous nationº .
It is fascinating to read through the Library of Congress Report while holding in mind
related discussions in the context of racial inequality. Language used to describe a
ª separateº and ª isolatedº community that continues ª to lag economicallyº in the context
of the Appalachia region (whose population is largely white) might equally well
be found in any contemporary planning report about the plight of black Americans.
The parallels with af® rmative action legislation abound. For example, the Report
notes that the ARDA legislation was highly controversial in Congressional debates,
noting particularly that ª members from other areas opposed a plan to favor one
geographic region over anotherº (CRS, 1985, p. 5), hence using language that is almost
eerily similar to the Preamble from Governor Wilson’s Executive Order reviewed in the
® rst example.
References to the historical accumulation of inequities in Appalachia are also apt and
recall similar discussions in the context of the enduring legacy and cumulative causation
of racial inequality. From the Act itself, we learn that ª the region’s uneven past
development, with its historical reliance on a few basic industries and a marginal
agriculture, has failed to provide the economic base that is a vital prerequisite for
vigorous, self-sustaining growthº . The Act is laced with references to the need for
enhanced access to diminish its isolation, and to programmes ª with special emphasis on
vocational and technical educationº . It articulates development criteria that ª will im-
prove, on a continuing rather than a temporary basis, the opportunities for employment,
the average level of income, or the economic and social development of the area served by
the projectº (CRS, 1985, appendix, emphasis added). All of this is an impressive bit of
af® rmative action legislation geared to a speci® c geographic entity.
It is noteworthy that there is nothing in the ARDA legislation that attempts or
purports to assist the people of Appalachia in ® nding a better life beyond the borders of the
region. Indeed, out-migration is perceived as one of the problems facing the region, and
this is a key to understanding the operative conception of identity that underlies this
particular example of praxis. Despite, or perhaps because of, the strong sense of regional
identity, the identity of people from the region becomes subsumed within the identity
of the region itself. An out¯ ow of people from the region is viewed as an atrophy of the
region’s inherent vitality, rather than as a bene® cial or practical means of contributing
to their individual welfares. Regional identity in Appalachia has an `organic’ or `ecolog-
ical’ quality to it, and sociologists since at least the 1930s have worked with an explicit
recognition of the signi® cance of such regional identities (Lobao, 1994). Appalachia is
more than a geographic region. Its identity constitutes a way of life, a culture, and a
people. The same does not apply to the ® nal example, that of enterprise zones.

Spaces for Enterprise

On 15 June 1977, Professor Peter Hall presented a paper on ª Green Fields and Grey
Areasº to the Royal Town Planning Institute annual conference in Chester, England, in
which he proposed a `Freeport solution’ for inner-city problems. This paper is signi® cant
in large measure because it was credited in March of 1980 by then-Chancellor of the
Exchequer Sir Geoffrey Howe in prompting Mrs Thatcher’s government to implement
a policy of enterprise zones targeting certain geographic spaces (emphasis added) within
the country to receive distinctive treatment to promote economic revitalization. The
 Identity and Inequality 269

emphasis on radical measures to reduce the burden of taxes and regulations also caught
the favor of the Reagan administration in the US, and hundreds of legislatively enacted
enterprise zones now exist in the US and Britain. Over the past 20 years the nature of
these preferences has evolved, with the original emphasis on relief from the burden of
government taxes and regulation being supplemented by programmes providing
government support for employment creation, job training, and the like (see Dowall et
al., 1994). There has been a similar evolution in rhetoric, with `empowerment zones’
supplanting `enterprise zones’ in the language of the Clinton administration for example.
In all cases, the basic principle remains: well-de® ned, discrete (and, often, quite small)
geographical spaces, or businesses and residents located within those spaces, receive
specialized treatment designed to promote economic revitalization in geographic zones
that are seen to be lagging in development.
While there are clearly direct linkages in general between a concern for a geographic
space and the people within its boundaries, it is equally clear that the legislation
described in this example is explicitly spatial in its reference to inequality and in its
endeavour to redress that inequality. The disjuncture between (i) a preoccupation with
a particular space and (ii) the people within that space is stronger here than in the
Appalachia example because the latter has a strong regional identity, whereas the
discrete spaces designated for spatial justice in the case of enterprise zones are less
organic, in the sense of that term used above. The contrast here is perhaps most starkly
evident in Professor Hall’s RTPI address, wherein he describes the ideal candidate area
for a Freeport zone: ª It is most appropriate to those inner city areas which are largely
abandoned, and denuded of people ¼ º (Hall, 1981, emphasis added). Thus, we have here
a polar case of identity construction focused on a spatial unit that is devoid (or
`denuded’) of human content, and hence identity that is exclusively spatial. Issues of social
justice in this context are equally vacuous, and space becomes a passive receptor for
accommodating enterprise.

Lessons for Planning Practice

The examples in the preceding section collectively illustrate the tight nexus between
identity construction and social justice formulation in ® ve highly distinct policy settings
involving spatial and/or racial inequality. Now consider what happens when policies
formulated in one context are inappropriately transferred to another, where the implicit
assumptions regarding identity (and hence social justice) are no longer tenable. To this
end two examples from practice will be considered. The ® rst example is inspired by an
internal memo written in 1991 by then-Chief Economist Lawrence Summers of the
World Bank proposing what can be termed a `commodi® cation’ approach to environ-
mental degradation. The second example explores a proposal by California Governor
Gray Davis to use spatial mechanisms in pursuit of racial justice. Table 2 recasts Table
1 with these two examples in mind.

Commodi® ed Environmental Degradation

In a now-infamous internal memo,6 then-Chief Economist Larry Summers argued that
many poor countries are under-polluted. With impeccable economistic reasoning, Sum-
mers maintained that a Pareto-improving solution to the problem of pollution in wealthy
countries would be to ship the offending rubbish and toxins to poorer countries whose
270 E. J. Heikkila

Table 2. Two cases of mistaken identity

Realm of practice Identity construct Social justice construct

Waste disposalÐ Atomistic consumers Pareto optimality and

World Bank perspective 5
Waste disposalÐ
Waste recipient perspective
UC admissions reformÐ
Governor Davis perspective
UC admissions reformÐ
Tiebout perspective
of commodi® ed space commodity exchange
Macro regional and Regional and racial
race-based identity dignity and equity
Neighbourhood identities Af® rmative action
qua racial identities
Atomistic consumers Pareto optimality and
of local public goods voting with one’s feet

market valuation of amenities is relatively low, re¯ ecting the fact that incomes in
poorer countries are low while the income elasticity of environmental quality is gener-
ally high. Poorer countries’ welfare would be improved because they would be paid to
accept the rubbish and toxins, while wealthier countries’ welfare would be improved
because they would be, in effect, purchasing enhanced environmental quality at bargain
prices.
Summers’ analysis relies on a particular spatial construction of identity. As indicated
in Table 2, this entails atomistic consumers operating in a medium of commodi® ed
space. A signi® cant structural feature of physical or material space is that we can slice
it up into segments and issue deeds or titles of ownership to the resulting spatial
parcels.7 These in turn lend themselves to the formation of markets by which such deeds
are transferred from one owner to the next. Space also has an accommodating capacity
that enables us to build structures upon or within spaces, and we have developed
vibrant real estate industries for this very purpose. This commodi® cation, or `widgetiz-
ing’,8 of space makes it a commodity like any other consumer good or factor input, and
so the two fundamental theorems of welfare economics apply. The ® rst theorem states that
any competitive equilibrium outcome satis® es the allocative ef® ciency criterion of Pareto
optimality. The second theorem states that any Pareto optimal outcome is supportable
in principle by some competitive market equilibrium. These two theorems are the
cornerstones of economists’ belief in the virtue of markets as a tool for welfare
enhancement and so provide a strong nexus between widgets and welfare. For further
explanation of the two fundamental welfare theorems see Heikkila (2000). The com-
modi® cation of space thus draws issues of social justice into the purview of an
economistic conceptual framework.
From Summers’ perspective, therefore, allocative ef® ciency, and hence Pareto optimal-
ity, is achieved through a spatial reallocation of noxious materials. In these economistic
models, space is a property that is assigned to the person `whose space it is’. Degra-
dation of a localized environment is equivalent to a reduction in property values or
effective wealth for the affected parties and so monetary compensation is in principle an
appropriate remedial measure. Justice issues are recognized, but only in the context of
commodity exchange. When environmental quality is commodi® ed in this way, it is
logical for poor countries to sell off bits of environmental quality to the highest bidder.
Environmental quality is an asset like any other, and Pareto-improving exchanges of
such assets make sense. This is the perspective that is summarized in the ® rst row of
Table 2.
From the viewpoint of the prospective recipients of this waste, however, the principles
at stake are similar to that of prostitution. A community that takes pride in its regional
 Identity and Inequality 271

or place-bound identity and that adheres to certain principles of dignity would be

unwilling to make its physical environment available for degradation by the highest
bidder. To present such a decision as the outcome of free will in the context of market
choice is to overlook entirely the fundamental social± historical± spatial processes that
give rise to and shape the meaning of that speci® c `moment’ of free choice, as well as
the meaning of the attachment of a people to a place. The public outcry in response to
Summers’ proposal was a visceral reaction to a reductionist view that is intrinsically
incapable of accommodating psychological attachments that a community might have to
the particularities of its local environment. Such attachments are no less rational or no
more explicable than the attachments that parents have to their children. The association
is deep-rooted and psychological, and models of environmental justice that reduce these
attachments to monetary equivalents or commodity exchange are unlikely to be satisfac-
tory. The proposal failed to comprehend the spatially constructed sense of identity that
people held and its importance in underpinning a corresponding notion of social justice
(see Table 2, second row).

University Admissions Reform in California

A proposal related to university admissions reform in California provides another
interesting example of the consequences of misperceiving the nexus between socially
constructed identity and social justice. Shortly after his election Governor Gray Davis
¯ oated a proposal that was designed to counter legislation enacted by his predecessor
Pete Wilson (as discussed above) repealing af® rmative action in many areas of state
policy, including preferential treatment for under-represented racial minorities for
admission to the University of California (UC) system. Because race-based preferences
were no longer feasible following the passage of Proposition 209 in a 1996 state-wide
referendum, Governor Davis suggested that preferences could instead be given to high
school districts that were traditionally under-represented in the UC schools. Of course,
those districts that would bene® t most directly and immediately from such a proposal
are those with disproportionately large populations of under-represented racial minori-
ties, primarily blacks and Latinos.
Davis’s proposal is an illuminating example of how aspects of spatial and racial
inequality can become intertwined, where it is clear that his intention was to use a
spatial mechanism to redress issues of racial inequality. Quoted in an Associated Press
report dated 28 July 1999, Davis averred that he is ª convinced that outreach programs
can be fashioned that are constitutionally permissible, based on socioeconomic status,
geographic area or other non-race based characteristicsº (emphasis added). While Governor
Davis’s heart may be in the right place, his proposal reveals an implicit identity
construction of neighbourhood identities qua racial identities and af® rmative action as a
corresponding principle of social justice (see Table 2, row 3). This view overlooks an
important structural characteristic of material spaceÐ one’s ability to move through it
and to relocate within itÐ that clearly does not apply to race. We can change our place
but we cannot change our race.9
The Tiebout model provides an alternative perspective to Governor Davis’s proposal.
Charles Tiebout’s (1956) classic work on local public goods is one of the most highly
cited articles in the economic literature. In Tieboutian models of spatial competition,
individuals `vote with their feet’ to relocate in places that offer more favourable
advantages, and this process of spatial arbitrage has a powerful levelling effect on
inequalities across space. Likewise, in neoclassical models of intra-urban location,
272 E. J. Heikkila

differentials in the equilibrium bid-rent curve provide full monetary compensation for
any particular locational disadvantages that one place might hold relative to another. In
both cases, there is an explicit link to social justice through the Pareto optimality
principle of allocative ef® ciency. This principle of enhanced equality of opportunity
through spatial mobility is so thoroughly ingrained in economics that `open models’ of
regional or urban economies (i.e. models that allow for the possibility of perfect mobility
between places) are operationalized mathematically through the assumption of identical
utilities or welfare levels.
Effective implementation of Governor Davis’s proposal hinges on the distinction
between these two perspectives on neighbourhood identity. Most importantly from a
Tieboutian perspective, legislation to provide preference to speci® c spatial districts could
give some households an incentive to relocate to these preferred spaces. This would be
especially true for those households `on the margin’, that is, those households whose
children would likely qualify for admission if they were to move into a preferred district
but not otherwise. Note that this tactic is speci® cally a result of the presumed spatial
mobility of households as per Tiebout’s hypothesis, and it would not be possible if the
original intent of explicitly race-based preferences were applied.
This spatial relocation of households would have two effects, one positive and one
negative from the perspective of the proposed programme’s intent. In the short to
medium term, the spatial mobility of households would undermine the intent of
race-based preferences by allowing whites and Asians (who are relatively `over-
represented’ in the UC system) to relocate to districts that might allow them to gain
access admission to the UC system. Those with the strongest incentive to relocate would
be those with the best prospects for gaining admission, thereby `displacing’ a black or
Latino resident of the recipient district from the pool of admittants. In the limiting case
of perfect mobility (the analogue to the `open model’ discussed above in the context of
economic models of spatial mobility), this process of relocation would in fact completely
undermine the intent of the proposal, and the distribution of admissions among different
ethnic or racial groups would be unchanged, only their spatial distribution would
change. Thus in the short to medium term, depending upon the speed of the spatial
adjustment process, the effects of spatial mobility are distinctly negative from the
perspective of the original intent of the proposal.
However, in the longer term, another effect may dominate. What begins as a proposal
to enhance racial equity at the level of university admissions may in fact have a more
profound effect in terms of neighbourhood or district development. The incentive
structure suggested by Governor Davis’s proposal could provide a strong stimulus to
more neighbourhood integration, thereby reducing the isolating and `Othering’ effects of
the ghetto phenomenon. As more af¯ uent households begin to settle in lagging school
districts they would presumably begin to exercise their political in¯ uence to bring a
more equitable distribution of resources to support higher levels of service in education
and other local public goods. Thus, what began as an intent to enhance racial equity in
the realm of UC admissions might instead enhance racial equity in the realm of
neighbourhoods through a process of spatial relocation and integration. That is the
optimistic scenario. Another possibility is that the more af¯ uent nouveaux arrivees would
con® ne themselves to forti® ed and privatized enclaves within their newly adopted
districts, and so would only make use of the advantageous spatial coordinates offered
by their new setting without attempting to integrate or make common cause with (i.e.
identify with) those residents who were in place beforehand and who might have deeper
attachments to the place that is in that space.
 Identity and Inequality 273

Conclusion
It is useful now to revisit the two principal conclusions introduced at the outset of this
article. The ® rst conclusion identi® es a nexus between the social construction of identity
and corresponding representations of social justice. How we conceive of justice depends
on who we are, or who we imagine ourselves to be. This conclusion is much more than
a mere statement of the obvious element of self-interest in questions of justice. For
example, atomistic conceptions of human identity reinforce and are reinforced by
Benthamite principles of utilitarianism. Similarly, a paranoic conception of `the Other’
begets a so-called separate but equal doctrine of justice that isolates the Other. More
recent postmodern conceptions of identity challenge the ® xity of space and race in the
formation of self-representations and, accordingly, invite a more ¯ uid and radically open
formulation of justice and just action. In a more purely spatial domain, the same
principal applies. For example, a strong conception of regional identity easily invites an
approach to justice and equality that is almost a mirror image of its racial counterpart.
Thus, issues of social justice and socially constructed identity are not merely inter-
related: they are inseparable. An intriguing corollary follows from this point: an
alternative to altering the distribution of material well-being across entities is to alter the
formation of entities over which identity is de® ned. The practical import of this for planning
theorists is that developments or advances in one area of study (social justice, for
example) should yield counterparts in the other (social construction of identity).
The second conclusion admonishes planners of the potential pitfalls that await those
who fail to recognize this nexus. Leaving assumptions about identity construction
implicit leads all too easily to ambiguous or even contradictory policies regarding social
justice. This pitfall is especially prevalent where issues of spatial and racial inequality are
conjoined, for the super® cial correspondences between the two can be misleading.
Spatial mobility and the commodi® cation of material space are de® ning features of
spatial structure that clearly do not apply to race. Likewise, there is no ready racial
analogue to the manner by which units of space can be commodi® ed, subdivided,
parceled and sold.10 Policy interventions to promote social justice via the establishment
of more ef® cient real estate markets in the `inner city’ may be derived from or motivated
by structural models of space. However, their true impact on social justice may be
wholly different from what is intended because the same structural considerations of
mobility and commodi® cation do not apply to race. There is a danger, therefore, that
misapplication of `commodi® ed reasoning’ could lead directly to a surreptitious, or at
least inadvertent, commodi® cation of race. This danger is especially acute where issues of
race and space coincide, such as in the `inner city’ in the US.
To recapitulate, seven speci® c examples from practice have brought into sharp focus
the nexus between social identity and social justice:

(1) Repeal of af® rmative action regulations in California in 1995.

(2) De facto ghettoization policies.
(3) Radical protest movements against mainstream global planning and development
institutions.
(4) Appalachia Regional Development Act of 1965.
(5) Enterprise zones.
(6) World Bank proposal in 1991 to commodify environmental degradation.
(7) California Governor proposal in 1999 to use spatial mechanisms to affect racial
justice.
274 E. J. Heikkila

These examples were chosen deliberately to exemplify a wide range of issues and
circumstances in order to underline the broad practical import of the central theoretical
conclusions of this article. Most importantly, issues of social justice cannot be understood
independently of issues of human identity. In planning practice, as Daphne Spain (1993)
asserts, ª con¯ ict over resource allocation is clothed in the language of different values
regarding the community’s identityº . So, in the ® nal analysis, planning intervention to
promote social justice and equity necessarily entails a foray into the social construction
of human identity. It is a tall order for planning practice, and it is one that the planning
profession may not yet be fully capable of responding to, but justice demands it.

Acknowledgements
Dhiraj Narayan and Hae-ran Shin provided capable and enthusiastic research assistance.
I am also grateful to four anonymous referees and to the editor for important and
constructive suggestions in preparing this article for publication.

Notes
1. The `separate but equal’ doctrine was formally established in law by the US Supreme Court in the Plessy
v. Ferguson ruling of 1896, and then overturned by the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 (ACLU,
1999).
2. David Harvey (1996, p. 7) quoting S. Friedman (1995) Beyond white and other: Relationality and narratives
of races in feminist discourse, Signs, 21, pp. 1± 49.
3. Quotation taken from Soja (1996, p. 83), who in turn is citing bell hooks (1990, p. 31) Yearnings (Boston,
South End Press).
4. The term ª spatially constructed identityº is used here in lieu of the more precise but cumbersome ª socially
constructed spatially based identityº .
5. The term ª World Bank perspectiveº is shorthand for ª the perspective outlined in the leaked internal World
Bank memoº . I note that the memo did not constitute of® cial World Bank policy.
6. The memorandum dated 12 December 1991 was reported in The Economist on 8 September 1992. See also
Harvey (1996, p. 366).
7. Lefebvre refers to this as the ª total pulverizationº of space (see Harvey, 1989, p. 254)
8. By convention, in most microeconomics textbooks the standardized good is referred to as a `widget’ .
9. It can be argued that racial identity is more ¯ uid and less exogenous than we often imagine, but this point
will be left for another time.
10. It is tempting to think of the institution of slavery as it was practiced in the US 150 years ago to be a racial
analogue to this process of commodi® cation. That, however, is not a correct analogy. Slavery was not the
commodi® cation of race, it was the commodi® cation of people of race.

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