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The paper describes the use of gaming simulation in the teaching of integrated land usetransportation planning as a part of an undergraduate civil engineering course. A key innovation of the UPTown game developed at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, is the way in which the actions of both public sector planners and private sector real estate developers are simulated by students. This allows students to explore the problems of conflicting objectives and to discover the value of cooperative planning in the land use and transportation development process. The paper describes the background to and rationale for an integrated planning course, and it explains the game and simulation aspects in detail.Assessment of student performance showed that the game significantly enhanced the achievement of learning outcomes. Students who faced more complex and open-ended tasks performed better, reaching higher levels of competence earlier on in the game. The paper should be of value to educators who wish to develop new approaches, such as gaming simulation, to respond to contemporary engineering students' preferences for more active and social learning styles.

For the past two decades, the South African government, through various initiatives, attempted to undo the apartheid spatial landform existing in the country. Only in 2013 was the real 'spatial justice turn in planning' formally introduced in planning legislation. Little is known about the spatial justice concept and how it should be applied to planning and development activities. This article proposes positioning spatial justice within the wider justice and social justice discourse. Using a meta-synthesis, this article proposes a working definition of spatial justice in an attempt to unravel the properties and nuances within it. The meta-synthesis frames the concept of spatial justice to possess equity, diversity, democracy, just distribution, benefit of the disadvantaged, and access to necessary resources to meet basic needs. This working definition could be used to develop a framework to operationalise spatial justice, helping policy makers and practitioners undo spatial injustices that exist in our geographies.

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The failure of spatial planning implementation (SPI) in local municipalities contributes to the growing call for spatial planning reform and overhaul. Some barriers and enablers to the implementation of spatial planning are salient both in theory and practice. However, it remains unknown and unconfirmed whether these factors could enhance or impede the implementation of spatial planning in pursuit of environmental justice (EJ). EJ calls for equality in spatial transformation to bridge the gap between fragmented development and existing spatial patterns. The text addresses the question of what factors are perceived to enhance or impede strategies of SPI whilst promoting environmental justice. The study adopts a mixed research strategy, which is applied to a sample of municipalities in six provinces of South Africa. The results reveal that there are various barriers and enablers that can promote or hinder the process of improving SPI in an attempt to facilitate and maintain EJ.