From diversity to justice – Unraveling pluralistic rationalities in urban design

For Jane Jacobs, the city is a fundamental unit of diversity; she develops her ideas in the city around this key axiom. Diversity provides an ethical orientation and thus defines what a just city should achieve. For Jacobs, justice is represented by peoples' inherent right to ‘make cities’. According to Jacobs, cities become just places by their ability to facilitate the spontaneous dynamics among social fabrics and urban spaces to generate the beauty and value of cities. This contribution picks up this claim for diversity and develops a theoretical lens to explore how diversity is incorporated in urban design. We use a theory on pluralism—Cultural Theory—to analyse forms of managing urban space in different types of goods. This is applied to analyse four idealistic urban spaces in the city of Leipzig. •Jacobs' diversity is unravelled by looking at diversely managed urban spaces•Different rationalities lead to different types of goods (i.e. use of urban space)•Four ideal-typical rationalities are linked to existing urban spaces in Leipzig•Urban design should be informed by these conflicting ways of managing urban space•Cultural Theory advises not perfect, but clumsy cities to pursue Jacobs' diversity