Opinion: Design Justice is a fundamentally different way of understanding who and what a city is for
Dublin is a city in the midst of a crisis. Housing has become a luxury rather than a right, pushing thousands into precarious living situations and making homelessness a stark reality for many. In many ways, this crisis results from policies treating land primarily as an asset for speculation rather than as a home.
The capital increasingly serves commercial interests ahead of residents and communities, something which deepens inequalities. This is at a time when escalating energy and living costs compound the struggles faced by citizens, forcing harsh choices between essential needs like heating and basic living standards.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, architect and former Head of Urban Planning at Freiburg, Germany, Prof Wulf Daseking on the science of planning cities
This precarious existence is unsustainable and we need a fundamental rethinking of urban planning that prioritises communities over profits, and equitable living spaces over speculative interests. This could be Design Justice.
What is Design Justice?
Design Justice begins with a simple premise: the built environment is never neutral. Cities are designed, and design is power. Who gets to shape a city? Who benefits from its architecture, its transport, its housing? Who is displaced, erased, pushed to the margins?
These are the questions at the heart of Sasha Costanza-Chock's Design Justice network framework, which proposes that the power to design and plan be taken out of the hands of developers and government and given to the communities who actually live in and move through these spaces.
Sasha Costanza-Chock discusses Design Justice
Like so many other cities, Dublin has been increasingly designed for those who profit from it, not for those who belong to it. Housing policy is dictated by investors, not by the people searching for homes. Streets are laid out for cars, not for the people walking them. Public spaces are commercialised and made deliberately inhospitable to those who need them most.
Design Justice argues that urban planning must be redistributive. It also believes that a city must be designed for those who are most vulnerable within it. This includes those priced out of their neighbourhoods and those for whom a missing bench or an inaccessible footpath or an unaffordable bus fare is a barrier.
It recognises that the city is experienced differently depending on gender, class, disability, race, citizenship and age. Design justice means shifting away from one-size-fits-all planning towards structures that centre these differences rather than erasing them.
From Bloomberg Originals, inside Vienna's radical idea of affordable housing for all
Learning from other cities
In Vienna, 60% of its residents live in publicly funded, high-quality housing, built with shared courtyards, pedestrian-first streets, and public transport so comprehensive that car ownership is largely unnecessary Rent is controlled and the market does not dictate who stays and who goes. A person can build a life there, knowing their home will not be ripped from beneath them.
The Austrian city is also a feminist city, one shaped by decades of planning that prioritises gender equity. Public spaces are designed to be accessible, well-lit, safe. Streets are built with care in mind, acknowledging that women are more likely to make multiple short trips during the day for work, childcare, and errands. The city is structured to support life rather than extract profit.
Barcelona has similarly reimagined its streets. The Superblocks project has reclaimed entire neighbourhoods from traffic, transforming streets into shared spaces where pedestrians take priority and public life flourishes. Pollution levels have dropped, noise has softened and the city, for the first time in decades, resembles a place designed for people not vehicles.
From Vox, how Barcelona's Superblocks project is taking streets back from cars
In Glasgow, abandoned lots and forgotten patches of land have been turned into urban gardens, cultural hubs and social enterprises. The Stalled Spaces programme demonstrates that a city can choose to see vacancy as an opportunity to create something collectively owned and needed.
A city built for belonging
Dublin's streets are designed for passage, not for presence. There are few places to sit and those that do exist are designed to be uncomfortable, with furniture spiked, divided and shaped to prevent lingering. Public toilets are nearly non-existent, a quiet and deliberate signal that the city is not meant for anyone who cannot afford to spend money to be there. You are either moving, or you are trespassing.
Some cities have begun to unlearn this logic. Bogotá has invested in cycling and pedestrian infrastructure that favours movement without wealth. Singapore weaves climate resilience into its streets, with permeable pavements, rooftop forests, and urban wetlands that cool and protect. Seoul tore down a highway and uncovered a river, transforming a polluted corridor into a place of gathering, breathing, dwelling.
Dublin's crisis is not one of capacity but of conviction
Dublin could do the same, but it would have to imagine its land as something other than a commodity. Design Justice offers a map to do so. It is not a theory confined to academic journals or activist workshops and is practical, implementable, scaleable and already reshaping cities around the world. It challenges the logics of exclusion and privatisation by asking a different set of questions: who is this city for? Whose needs does it meet? Whose lives does it sustain?
Dublin's crisis is not one of capacity but of conviction. The tools exist and the precedents are clear to change this. What remains is the will to act and to redistribute space, reimagine belonging and root planning in justice. That is the way of Design Justice - and it should be the way ahead for our capital city.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
