Bringing moral clarity to urban planning: Developing data-driven metrics of spatial justice for neighbourhood accessibility

Recent research has focused on developing conceptual frameworks for spatial justice in accessibility analysis, but there remains a gap in its practical application at the neighbourhood level. We propose specific indicators based on the ethical principles of Egalitarianism, Utilitarianism and Rawls’ Egalitarianism. To illustrate the approach, we evaluate the fairness of accessibility to places of employment, applied to urban network models of diverse cases, although in this abstract we focus only on Cape Town. The results emphasise how spatial justice is both scale and value reliant. Furthermore, the methodology contributes to an inclusive urban agenda, adapting to varying data availabilities.