Operational Definitions of Justice Produce Different Urban Heat Resilience Outcomes

Abstract

Planning for urban heat resilience projects inherently involves the distribution of benefits and burdens, raising concerns about justice. The just outcome of these projects requires clarity on how justice is defined, conceptualized, measured, and translated into practice. Here, we demonstrate how alternative conceptualization of justice result in significant variations in the distribution of urban heat resilience resources. We analyze these alternatives through the choices of interpretations of justice theories, indicators for resource distribution, the scale of jurisdictional autonomy in urban governance, modeling constraints of urban morphologies, and granularity of data. We use the case of Greater Sydney to examine the implications of operationalizing justice, including instances where the increased provision of tree canopies as a resource in the face of urban heat has unintentionally increased injustices. Our findings highlight the significance of contextualized strategies and urban governance structures to organize just outcomes of resilience projects.

Keywords: data granularity, distributional justice, jurisdictional autonomy, tree canopy, urban heat, urban morphologies