Spatial ethics as an evaluation tool for the long-term impacts of mega urban projects: An application of spatial ethics multi-criteria assessment to canning town regeneration projects, London

Decision-making processes for mega urban infrastructure developments are far from closed rational systems. They rarely satisfy everyone, and are politically driven, reflecting the interests of key stakeholders and macro-scale economic development goals, with limited evaluation of multi-scale impacts and unwanted negative consequences to society at large. An integrated approach to evaluating impacts is required in consideration of the spatial and thus unavoidably ethical, political nature of decision-making on mega infrastructure development. Spatial Ethics (SE) is addressed as a conceptual basis to investigate the multi-scale impacts and the spatial equity issues of urban infrastructure development. SE multi-criteria assessment (MCA) has been explored as a tool to evaluate urban transport projects in respect of plurality of actors, interests and priorities by involving stakeholders in shaping the framework as well as evaluating the impacts. A case study, which applies the framework, identifies that urban transport infrastructure investment brings benefits and costs related to urban spatial transformation. The positive return to society over time and space is limited from the spatially ethical perspective; however, identification of winners and losers cannot be generalized as the impacts are perceived differently by individuals who are affected by various external and internal factors.