ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Cities
Sec. Innovation and Governance
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsc.2025.1656745
This article is part of the Research TopicBarriers and Enablers to Effective Climate Governance in CitiesView all 9 articles
Spatial Justice in Participatory Planning: An Integrated Framework and Lessons from Practice
Provisionally accepted
Juliana E. Goncalves1*
Roberto Rocco1Maria Sitzoglou2Nafsika Michail2
Diana Kupper3Stelios Grafakos3Milutin Djuraskovic4Carina Veeckman4Nick Pantelidis5Alexandros Gkatsikos5
Stefanos Vrochidis5Alberto Dieguez-Seoane6Arancha Jover6
Maria Guerrero-Hidalga6Alice Jelmini7Taliah Dommerholt7Samir Amin7
Cristina Visconti8,9Louise Francis10- 1Technische Universiteit Delft, Delft, Netherlands
- 2Design Clips Studio, Thessaloniki, Greece
- 3Global Green Growth Institute, Jung-gu, Republic of Korea
- 4imec-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
- 5Information Technologies Institute, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas - CERTH, Thessaloniki, Greece
- 6CETaqua, Barcelona, Spain
- 7Institute for Urban Excellence, The Hague, Netherlands
- 8Universita degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy
- 9Urban Climate Change Research Network, Naples, Italy
- 10Mapping for Change, London, United Kingdom
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Climate change is driving cities to transition towards more sustainable urban systems, often implementing these transitions through spatial interventions. However, without a deliberate focus on spatial justice, such climate initiatives risk exacerbating existing socio-spatial inequalities, leading to issues such as green gentrification and maladaptation, which affect vulnerable populations the most. Participatory practices have the potential to foster just transitions, yet they are not well integrated into planning and design processes and are insufficiently linked to spatial justice. This paper introduces a framework that integrates participatory approaches into a typical planning and design cycle through a spatial justice perspective. The framework is applied to eight cases in various geographical contexts, encompassing a range of practices from participatory planning workshops to the development of digital participation tools. Our findings suggest that the framework enables both researchers and practitioners to adopt a more holistic approach to participation in planning and design. Furthermore, we identify key enablers, barriers, and lessons learned from these cases, offering insights that can inform urban practitioners, policymakers, and researchers in advancing spatial justice through participatory planning. Ultimately, this study contributes to enabling just urban transitions by providing a structured approach to embedding spatial justice in participatory planning and design.
Keywords: Spatial justice, strategic planning, urban design, citizen engagement, Public Participation
Received: 30 Jun 2025; Accepted: 10 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Goncalves, Rocco, Sitzoglou, Michail, Kupper, Grafakos, Djuraskovic, Veeckman, Pantelidis, Gkatsikos, Vrochidis, Dieguez-Seoane, Jover, Guerrero-Hidalga, Jelmini, Dommerholt, Amin, Visconti and Francis. 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: Juliana E. Goncalves, j.e.goncalves@tudelft.nl
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