MINI REVIEW article
Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Urban Science
Volume 11 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2025.1616966
This article is part of the Research TopicTerritorial Governance as a Tool For Transformative ChangeView all articles
Operationalizing Spatial Justice: A Transdisciplinary Framework for Territorial Equity in Portugal
Provisionally accepted
Jorge Gonçalves1,2
Sílvia Jorge1,2*
Fernando Nunes da Silva1,2Juliano Amorim1,2Paula Vale de Paula1,2Robert Marques1,2hilal Cepni1,2- 1Associação do Instituto Superior Técnico de Investigação e Desenvolvimento (IST-ID), Lisboa, Portugal
- 2Center for innovation in Territory, Urbanism, and Architecture of the Instituto Superior Técnico of the University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
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This paper presents the Território.justo.pt project as an innovative initiative to operationalise the concept of spatial justice within the Portuguese territorial context. Drawing on foundational works by Lefebvre, Harvey, Soja, and Fainstein, the project develops a transdisciplinary and data-driven framework to identify and address territorial disparities across Portuguese municipalities. Through the combination of participatory workshops and cluster analysis (SPSS), the study maps spatial injustice along three core dimensions: mobility, economy, and governance. Four municipalities were also selected as representative case studies of each cluster, laying the groundwork for future research. These municipalities offer an opportunity to further investigate spatial (in)justice in context-specific ways and to test the operational applicability of the proposed framework.
Keywords: Spatial justice, territorial cohesion, participatory planning, Cluster analysis, Territorial governance
Received: 23 Apr 2025; Accepted: 30 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Gonçalves, Jorge, Nunes da Silva, Amorim, Vale de Paula, Marques and Cepni. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sílvia Jorge, Associação do Instituto Superior Técnico de Investigação e Desenvolvimento (IST-ID), Lisboa, Portugal
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