To dress Milton Friedman as John Rawls? Between the rhetoric of liberal justice in social urbanism and the socio-spatial injustices of the neoliberal provision of social housing in Medellín

Abstract

Theories on spatial justice allow us to build different analytical cuts and understand various discursive and practical facets of the production processes of spatial injustices. The case of 'social urbanism' in Medellín, and its particular local translation of the national housing model in the first two decades of the 21st century, allows, on the one hand, to reflect on the contradictions inherent in the conception of liberal justice -used as rhetoric of local governments between 2004 and 2011- and above all how it obscures the concrete practices of producing spatial injustices in the neoliberal provision of social housing. On the other hand, it is also a pertinent case to propose an interpretation of Fraser's categories of scales of justice as an instrument of geographical criticism of the production of spatial injustices. Thus, the objective of the article is to analyze the contradictions of said housing model, Rawlsian in rhetoric, but subsidiary in practice, emphasizing the processes of production of socio-spatial injustices. These implied the emergence of political conflicts on the urban-rural border (non-recognition and non-representation), as well as the aggravation of macro and micro patterns of residential segregation and the intensification of housing shortages (non-redistribution).