Diverse cities and urban inequalities
Lecture 1: Introduction
Diversity in European Policy
- Diversity is one of the main challenges for the future of cities
- Why? The need for breaking segregation and trying to live together in stead of seperatly
- Turning diversity into something positive: a creative force for innovation, well-being and growth
- Work on breaking segregation not only between ethnicity, but also class and culture
‘The diversification of diversity’
- Diversity within the concept diversity
Wat is diversity? (Steve Vertovec, 2007)
- Growing diveristy in cities entails more than ethnic diversity
- It also involves variables like immigration status, gender, age and lifestyle profiles
- Beyond the ethnic.
- Recent debate in Europe on super diversity.
- Policy makers respond critically on super diversity: impression that it’s positive.
- By only looking at the ethnical side, you stigmatize (Turkish boy instead of VWO boy).
- Societal challenge: increasing need to understand new patterns of inequality and prejudices and
new patterns of segregation.
- Policies aimed at THE poor, or THE gentrified are doomed to fail, they stick to stable, static concepts
and ignore superdiversity in its social reality.
- But also the need to know about how to translate academic knowledge into the policy area.
- The need to know more about the IMPACT of super diversity on communities, public service
delivery.
Focus on the local
- Ash Amin: local micropolitics of everyday interaction
- Valentine: cautions against generalisations about the positive effect of encounters on intercultural
understandings
Mixing in diverse neighbourhoods
- Talja Blokland & van Eijk (2010): diversity seekers and their social networks
- Diversity seekers are looking for diversity and multi-culturally in consumption, not in networks
- Against the expectations people are looking for economic advantages (ethnic entrepreneurs)
instead of the social advantages.
- Tectonic social relations: you live in the same space, but you don’t have contact or interactions
Inequality
- Income inequality: gap between rich and poor is increasing
- London: Middle class disappears
- You especially see this in the housing market. The percentage you pay of your income to rent.|
- Spatial inequalities: segregation (housing/public services)
Lecture 1: Introduction
Diversity in European Policy
- Diversity is one of the main challenges for the future of cities
- Why? The need for breaking segregation and trying to live together in stead of seperatly
- Turning diversity into something positive: a creative force for innovation, well-being and growth
- Work on breaking segregation not only between ethnicity, but also class and culture
‘The diversification of diversity’
- Diversity within the concept diversity
Wat is diversity? (Steve Vertovec, 2007)
- Growing diveristy in cities entails more than ethnic diversity
- It also involves variables like immigration status, gender, age and lifestyle profiles
- Beyond the ethnic.
- Recent debate in Europe on super diversity.
- Policy makers respond critically on super diversity: impression that it’s positive.
- By only looking at the ethnical side, you stigmatize (Turkish boy instead of VWO boy).
- Societal challenge: increasing need to understand new patterns of inequality and prejudices and
new patterns of segregation.
- Policies aimed at THE poor, or THE gentrified are doomed to fail, they stick to stable, static concepts
and ignore superdiversity in its social reality.
- But also the need to know about how to translate academic knowledge into the policy area.
- The need to know more about the IMPACT of super diversity on communities, public service
delivery.
Focus on the local
- Ash Amin: local micropolitics of everyday interaction
- Valentine: cautions against generalisations about the positive effect of encounters on intercultural
understandings
Mixing in diverse neighbourhoods
- Talja Blokland & van Eijk (2010): diversity seekers and their social networks
- Diversity seekers are looking for diversity and multi-culturally in consumption, not in networks
- Against the expectations people are looking for economic advantages (ethnic entrepreneurs)
instead of the social advantages.
- Tectonic social relations: you live in the same space, but you don’t have contact or interactions
Inequality
- Income inequality: gap between rich and poor is increasing
- London: Middle class disappears
- You especially see this in the housing market. The percentage you pay of your income to rent.|
- Spatial inequalities: segregation (housing/public services)
