Utility of an Infrastructure Project

In this column I have chosen to enter into that specific theme of our discipline concerning infrastructure social utility to focus on the peculiar need to correlate Pareto efficiency with the aim of distributive justice. I tried to explore the issue of social desirability of infrastructure projects avoiding the 'trap' of interpersonal comparison of utility by making reference to that particular and captivating concept of equity as fairness-no-envy. The considerations made stem from a problem of alteration of 'distributive equity' caused by the reciprocal influences between land use and transport system and aim to show how some undesired differentiation effects that the latter may have on a land use configuration represent a prerequisite for 'unequal' public choices regarding members of a given community, possibly generating a mix of feelings of resentment and envy. A few reflection are then expressed on the prevailing analyses of the normative repercussions of envy, presently supplemented by the study of its behavioral implications so that the concept of fairness-no-envy is progressively enriched through the contributions from several disciplines where areas of their 'speculative maps' overlap