How to assess spatial injustice: Distinguishing housing spatial inequalities through housing choice

Abstract

Regions often exhibit disparities in socio-economic conditions, leading to unequal access to resources and opportunities. This study focuses on the territorial aspect of justice and presents a methodology for identifying regions where individuals lack proper socio-economic conditions for upward mobility. We first provide an overview of spatial justice and establish a theoretical framework to support the model to assess spatial justice. We utilize factor analysis followed by hierarchical clustering to divide the territory of Portugal into four groups of occupation patterns and perform regression analysis on each group to generate four clusters based on housing choice potential, isolating territorial heterogeneities and evaluating each section of the territory by its own features. The study finds that nearly 11.65 % of the Portuguese population cannot afford to live in areas with better accessibility levels and that these individuals are primarily concentrated in urban areas. We argue that when distributing resources, it is important to consider not only inequalities but also the socio-economic factors that can influence an individual's ability to choose where to live.