Spatial Justice: A Shifting Perspective to Reframe Universal Design

This paper considers the social, cultural, and structural processes and practices, that are manifested in the built environment and mediated spatially, that create and maintain experiences of exclusion, otherwise known as spatial injustice. Expanding on two decades of case study research and empirical data collected in spatial justice across Canada and Australia, this paper interrogates perspectives of power and spatial injustices that still exist today. These case studies are based in institutions like malls, museums, urban precincts, and universities to usher in a new understanding of universal design through the lens of spatial justice and include creative practice (films), (dis)-audits, co-design processes, and disability allyship. This paper expands on the first comprehensive set of studies across spatial typologies, and how power and spatial justice are manifested and designed into architecture and interior environments-and their fields of knowledge. Key takeaways are new ways of knowing, teaching, and doing in architecture and design to create spatial justice and cultures of inclusion.