Iris Marion Young and urban geographies of difference

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of Iris Marion Young’s work on the field of geography. We discuss two matters that were elucidated by Iris Marion Young, and that have been taken up, repeatedly and as foundational insights, by urban and social geographers and urban planning scholars. These are (1) Young’s conception of justice and its central relationship to social difference and (2) Young’s attention to the city as a particular kind of social formation which has the potential to realize a form of social justice premised on a politics of difference, if traditional ideas of community are jettisoned in favour of ideas of the being together of strangers.