Political Aspects of Social Justice and Physical Planning in an Abstract City

This essay examines the issue of consistency between certain short‐run effects of urban policy and the corresponding incidence of policy. Short‐run effects are politically important in democracies because they determine popular support. Incidence, on the other hand, is socially important because it defines the level of welfare and its distribution among citizens. It is seen that the two are not necessarily consistent. Inconsistencies arise within both the social and the spatial realms of urban policy. Such inconsistencies depend upon individual preferences, urban morphology, urban technology, and upon the structure of society itself.