Designed for living : Part 1/4 and a half
Designed
for Living? part 1/4 and a half
This paper reviews and
critically analyses historical and recent theory, literature and research on
place making and the production of space in Britain’s urban cities. It particularly focuses on the life experiences
of newly arrived, migrant and minority communities. The purpose of this is to gain a perspective
on whether Britain’s
place making strategies, act as a barrier to resource or enabler of local
critical consciousness, through community led resource planning and if so
how?
This overview is for the purpose of
rethinking urban resource planning and place making from a bottom up process
through the perspective of ‘minority groups’ migrants and specifically the
poorer transient communities. This
overview therefore fits into the
broader theme of participatory knowledge in place making, urban planning and
social justice within any structure agency debate.
There is a vast array of theory and
literature on the rise of the European industrial city ( Marx, 118-1833) & (Wallerstein,2004 ) and ongoing research on international migration (International Migration
Institute,2012). Many studies in this
area have focused on social and racial
inequalities and they can offer us much in the understanding of how racism and
racialised systems may impede the life of a poorer migrant or minority group in
a deprived urban area. (Solomos, 1989)
Rex, & Tomlinson (1979), Massey
(1994) However, the relationship between place making and resource allocation
within these communities is a neglected area of study. (Thomas, 2000) Further,
more Pierce, Martin & Murphy (2011:180) argue that: “Reconciling the way
experience is lived and acted out in place, and how this relates to
political and economic developments... remains a most challenging concern for
theoretical endeavor.” Therefore, if not racist, race and racialised policies
cannot be ignored as at least one significant variable.
There does seem to have been “ambivalence” (Jackson,
1987:33) about race and gender and some ethnocentric and racial prejudice in
British public policy and planning departments. However, to argue that inadequate
planning for and lack of resources in deprived areas is all about race hides
the complex socio-political /spatial relationships that also emerge at a local
level. Therefore, this literature review
also highlights a number of studies that define race and racialisation as
contingent with social urban planning and resource allocation. However, there
are a number of variables or ‘actants’ that are also significantly latent that ‘bend
space’ (Latour, 1993) around minority groups
in the production of space and place.
Identity politics,
emotions and vital materialites all
join in the dialectical discourse in the production of place and space. In an attempt to obtain
how these actors
and ‘ actants’ may affect or effect a migrant or minority community network
in place making, resource allocation this review
looks at one research method that could be added alongside the established quantitative and qualitative data collection methods.
This is the cognitive mapping method.
Although this method has its critics, it is a useful bottom up method to
gain a structural interactionist perspective. Reviewing and critically analyzing the
cognitive methods practical application is an attempt to contextualize and
place an actor’s own perspective on living in a British deprived urban city and may help us place their voice in the space of the dialectical
discourses on place making, urban planning and resource allocation.
The
Urban City: Modern Place and Postmodern Space.
Much of the early classical research and
theories on European, industrial urban cities is based on historic analysis of
industrialised urban development with some relating to the urban experience. For both Marx (1818-1883) and Simmel (1858-1918) the city is the outcome of these macro
historical processes. Marx, argues that this process benefitted capitalist ideology and the ruling bourgeoisie
class. This ideology configured the mode
of production and the ideological and structural function of the city..
Unlike Marx’s socio-political hegemony imposed upon the city Simmel,
understood social differentiation. Simmel (1858-1918) did not see the city as a thing in itself but a place that was
inhabited by a myriad of different
individuals whose experiences are shaped by a priori categories and this then
shape and are shaped by systems and structures in the
city. Simmels theory is not as determined as Marx (1818-1883) Simmel, views this
structural interactionism as a dynamic not linear, process.
Although the above
theories allow us a perspective of the structural and some social forces underpinning
and shaping the social and individual fabric of life in the city, they were based on modern, industrial urban cities. Marx (1818-1883) and Simmels (1858-1918) early industrial cities tended to be inhabited
by European ‘white’ ethnic populations. These urban industrialised cities were designed therefore, on their utility, function
and practical applicability and understanding of community, within and for that
form of modern industry.
With de
industrialization and the rise of migration into urban cities, the utility,
function and demographics of these cities are changing again. In many contemporary cities, the idea of a
single ‘community’ is challenged. There are more diversity within and less
commonality between cities and the people within. These differences range in economies,
geographies and socio political networks.
These differences take form in and through policy, structure, identity
politics and cultural discourses. For this reason modern empiricist terms like ethnicity,
gender and even class are often differentiated in theoretical discourse. It is
for these reasons that we can also no longer empirically lump together the term
‘city’ ‘neighbourhood’ or ‘population’ under generalised empiricist headings in
any discussion on place making, space and structure and agency
Urban Discourses
During the 1960s and 1970s Identity Politics
and Cultural Studies, (Hall,1997)
theories began to inform contemporary urban
discourse. Postmodern, post-industrial theory, although still grounded in much of Marx (1818-1883) and Simmels (1858-1918) ideas, tended
to shift slightly from the structural/ materialist approach of
investigating place, towards a more symbolic
and signifying understanding of the people that live in and create the spaces. The postmodern theorist tends to view
cities as a series of unconnected, fragmented and
fractured flows of social spaces. Within these flows, individuals and groups
are fixed or emerge and function within in their prescribed or emergent spaces,
within the pre-set structures and systems of the city place.
De Certeau’s
(1988) work typifies this mix of historical dialectical materialist approach
and the symbolic signifying nature of later theory. De Certeau (1988) relates to the reader the
appropriation of the city by the people and the way they use and navigate the
places that have been pre-set for them.
He sees this appropriation as an opening up of individualised flows of
spaces within the physical and symbolic boundaries of the city place. This
opening up of flows of spaces allows the individual some social agency and
autonomous spaces of their own that is contrary to the ‘ministries of
knowledge’, prescribed functions and systems. (De Certeau, 1988)
Foucault, (1967,
1988) also perceives the city as a material image in the battle for social
agency and power. For Foucault (1988) the city is the social reification of a
bourgeoisie utopian dream which enforces dominant places and spaces on the
individual and creates within it heterotopic spaces. Therefore, for Foucault, (1967, 1988) no one
person lives in the same space at any one moment but each experience is
juxtaposed onto another to create a mirror image of a whole place. Bourdieu’s, ‘Habitus’ (Hillier,
& Booksby, eds 2005 ) and Foucault’s, (1967) heterotopias share a similar theoretical perception of power and
both believe that power is embedded in all places and spaces. This power is omnipresent
and systematically repressing individual social agency and is physically,
culturally, socially and symbolically perpetuated in its buildings, functions
and systems. Bourdieu, states that: “physical space is the concretization of
social space” (Hillier, J & Rooksby, E Eds 2005) and ( Foucault,
1967:1) announces: “We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of
juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the
dispersed.” In Bourdieu’s and Foucault’s city therefore even appropriation and
individualism is shaped and constrained within this battle for social capital
and agency.
Lefebvre’s (1991, 2009) battle for
capital and agency begins within in the; ‘Production of Space.’ Lefebrve considers all the above theories but he
places space and place in to a triad model. : “ For Lefebrve space is a social product consisting
of three elements” Goonewardena et al, (2008:269) The triad model
therefore focuses on the relational
spaces between lived
and representational spaces,
conceived space and representations of
space and perceived space and
spatial practices. This dialectical method of communicating is offered through Lefebvre’s, notion of ‘Autogestion’. Autogestion suggests that
decisions on planning and resource allocation should be placed in the community
space and that individuals in the community should make collective decisions on
planning and resource allocation.
Autogestion therefore, takes the decision away
from the top down process of ‘the bourgeoisie’ and ‘the ministries of
knowledge’ and becomes a bottom up process for decision-making. This form of
horizontal decision making hopes to see a more collective critical
consciousness that will transform the production of space and places that
Lefebrve perceives to be “determined
economically by capital, dominated socially by the bourgeoisie, and ruled
politically by the state” ( Lefebrve 1991: 227). Lefebvre’s analysis holds an inherent rationale that dialectical discourse can create a critical consciousness and
through this method a collective
knowledge may emerge to empower
individuals. Soja’s, ‘Spatial Justice’ (2008, 2010) is theoretically linked to
Lefebvre’s general ideas of community empowerment. However, Soja (2008) argues that spatial
justice comes through geographical place frames. Soja’s, (2008, 2010) ideas
focus on the equitable distribution of resources, services, and access to these
and that these basic human rights are part of a politics of space.
However, it could be difficult to work out how Foucault’s
‘heterotopias’ and Bourdieu’s ‘Habitus’ will be radically diminished by
‘Autogestion’ due to individual prejudices and 'self- interest' group
mobilisation. Furthermore, if we follow
the dialectical approach we also have to recognise Latour’s (1991) ‘actants’, Summer –Effler’s
(2010) ‘deviant emotions’ and Bennett’s (2010) ‘Vital Materialites.’ All interests emerging as the active participation of nonhumans as: “a force of
things”, with wills of their own that join in the dialectical discourse. (Bennett, 2010)
Latour’s (1993): argues that : actants/actor network: “is simultaneously an
actor whose activity is networking heterogeneous elements and a network that is
able to redefine and transform what it is made of." (Callon 1987: 93)
Furthermore : “(technological) reality is:
"simultaneously real, like nature, narrated, like discourse, and
collective, like society." (Latour, 1993:6). Therefore Latour, argues that perceived and or experienced ideas can form
technology, which may disperse
written policy and narratives, as in the
case of social media and interne
activity these ' activities' become form
therefore technologies become ‘actants’ in
a process that forms a global society. For
example: Actants, : “could be any
elements or properties which bends space around it, makes other elements
dependent upon it and translate their will into the language of its own.” Callon & Latour (1981:286) . Simply stated,
ideas gain simultaneously both structure and agency. For the purpose of this review i shall define
that as ' will' . These 'wills' therefore, create a socio-political, spatial
force. These forces then take process, through policy and so on until they
become physical sturctures such as the
form of written plans that outline geography, which through effort and labour become
buildings. Will, defines where ideas are
to be placed as graphical representations of such wills; as in the form of buildings to even cultural symbols on buildings.
Will is an actant.
All actants in the network
have influence of their own through persuasion of their own. Moreover, : “something is
treated as an agent…if it performs, or might perform [agency]”, Callon and Latour (1995, p.
490). Emotions and even vibrant materialites, such
as lack of trees, high rise blocks
and or rubbish thrown in an urban
place, can be placed in a networked space and
could create places out of spaces or ideas about a place for example, a
dirty, urban place.
Summer-Effler’s, (2002:58) argument
that
emotional energy or what she
calls: ‘deviant emotions’ can emerge as
emotional space to raise
critical consciousness can equally be applied in this network or emerge
as new networked space/s. Summer-Effler
argues that emotions, through critical consciousness, come forward in a space and
can add themselves into Bourdieu’s flow of social capital. Together these can
strengthen an emotional space. Emotion
therefore becomes a capital commodity as
well. If we integrate Summer-Effler’s (2002) theory we can argue
that a group or individual may have a weakened restricted, material space but through the form of
frustration, simultaneously create a critical consciousness that could become a
strong emotional capital space. Therefore,
through this process a rage at 'injustice'
takes on a capital materiality of its own,
as in the case of social group mobilisation and political organisations. This
space then joins in the discourse as a will and is a node in juncture, as a
node in the flow of ‘actants’ . For example; the use of promotional flyers glued onto
walls, posted in letter boxes or through
the use of social media, the mobile phone or any space where ; communication is
facillitated. Facillitation of actants
then become a network which become an
‘agent’ in the spatial discourse. There
is also another form of materiality that also gains ‘voices’ with agency and
these are Bennetts, ‘Vibrant Matter’ Bennett, joins the conversation and adds much
to our understanding of ' will' and ' actants' . Equally, Latour’s term
“actants,” also lends itself to Bennetts (2010) ‘vibrant matter’ and these form
what Bennett, terms assemblages.
Bennett’s (2010) assemblages are the quasi-agency of non-human materials
such as trees, the weather, rubbish,
daily growth and debris. Bennett,
offers growth and debris an
opportunity a 'space' in conversation and she achieves this through offering a tree and or an empty
building ' critical conciousness. However, can one argue that Bennetts (2010)
materialites hold a: “critical consciousness” in the way that Summer-Effler’s,
(2002) emotions and Lefebvre’s ‘Autogestion’ theories do? YES, It is quite
possible that we can have a conversation with an empty building.
How?
Certainly, buildings and resources cannot ‘talk’ and shout out
racist or sexist comments. However Bennets, idea that ‘a second kind of call is coming”
(Gratton, 2010) allows us some license to transfer and infer
onto non-human agents a form of critical consciousness in the form of
‘heritage’ discourses or ‘environmental’ or indeed ‘global city’ discourses. Gratton argues (2010) that Bennett: “ describes
vibrant networks of change operating beyond and within human beings without
providing a purpose/ness to the separable matter of nature, either coming from
human beings (anthropocentrism) or some divinity (ontotheology). These
‘second call’ discourses then take on forms of agentic states and rights. The
agentic state and rights of the tree, the rights of the grass in the park, all
come into the dialectical debate concerning
place making and urban planning and resource allocation. Have you ever
instructed a tree preservation order? The list of non agent agencies become
endless when we facillitate Bennetts, model/
theory. For example, Lightening, trees,
wildlife all can act as ‘Gods’ or ‘ Natures’
Immanence and takes an eminent relational status in some socio-political
spaces within networks and they ‘voice’ these status rights
into critical discourses on place- making
and space.
Without digressing into philosophical
discourse, we can attempt to capture the
above theories by reconciling them with previous research undertaken on place making and resource allocation
in deprived British urban cities. Through these theories, we may be able to contextualize the way
experience is lived and acted out for newly arrived, migrants and ethnic minorities
in space and place. Further, we can perceive how these research methods and
theories generated relate to socio/ political and economic developments, the
material place and subjective space, through migration into local wards and any
relationship between or around these to social and or spatial in/justice
Migration
in Transit and the Suspended City
In the second decade of the 21st
century population movement is
arguably now on a higher and unprecedented scale than it’s ever
been and it’s been estimated that half the world’s
population are living in cities with
most migration and population growth taking place in these urban areas. Cohen (2005: 63 ) argues that this fast growth is : ‘outstripping
the capacity of most cities to provide adequate services for their ‘citizens’. From a race and gender
perspective these are highly significant numbers of people heading to cities
that already seem unable or unwilling to full fill the needs
and required services of even the
indigenous urban populations.
Cities are changing and Clark, (2012) argues in his online article that:
“Business base, visitors, and other users, have accelerated well in advance of
the ability of cities and regions to invest in the infrastructure, amenity, and
facilities required to manage and shape that growth.” Whether
one agrees with him that these have accelerated well in advance or are an ‘ambivalent’ neo liberal economic and social oversight,
recent private and academic
research indicates that the real outcome of this ‘inability to keep up’ is the perpetuation and reiteration of inequalities in access to adequate housing and health and welfare
resources for all but particularly the poorer migrant and ethnic minority
communities that are living in the inner cities. Lozells and East Handsworth suffers from
high unemployment and degenerated urban wards and further government public
spending cuts. However, these wards are now placed next to Birmingham
‘Global City’ a concentrated economic and
consumer centre. (Campbell, 2011)
Birmingham is not
the only city with wards that are suffering from cuts. ‘ The National Council
for Voluntary Organisation’ (Kayne, & Allen 2011) found that half of all
local authorities, as well as making cuts to the public social welfare sector,
are making disproportionate cuts to the voluntary and community sector as well.
Research undertaken by The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO)
has found that national and local voluntary sector funding has also recently
seen a major decline in their funding. (Kayne, & Allen 2011) estimate in their report, that the voluntary
sector will lose £911 million in public funding from 2012 up to 2016. The community and voluntary sector will
cumulatively lose £2.8 billion between 2012 and 2016. This is a huge chunk of sustainability money gone and no money at all
allocated for the planning or redevelopment for future services. The NCVO, argue that these cuts are
detrimental to the future of the public voluntary resource and community
service sector. With this amount of
money lost, even existing material resources and services may collapse.
Without access to adequate resources in the future,
it may make settlement and life experiences very traumatic and difficult
considering these suspended services may never have been fully resourced and
fully accessible in the first place. ‘The Commission for Public Patient Involvement on Health’ in the UKs, studies. (Pamer & Ward) found that: “the
mental health needs of asylum seekers and refugees have shown that they are
likely to experience poorer mental health than native populations and are amongst
the most vulnerable and socially excluded people in our society.”
They add that structural influences and environmental factors such as
access to adequate housing, employment and education are contributing factors
towards the high percentages of Afro-Caribbean community members, suffering
schizophrenia. Although their research
is predominantly about emotional health issues, a closer scrutiny of their
report highlights that inadequate planning for resource allocation and even a
basic understanding of how far a building is situated from a migrant community,
acts as a spatial barrier to access and
these reports seem to add validity to Rex and Tomlinson (1979 ) , Solomos (1989 )
and Halls ( 1997 ) studies that
highlighted a structurally racialised
and culturally biased Britain
with bias being prominent in
the allocation of housing education and employment in the 1970s, 1980s,
and 1990s
Race, Gender: The Politics of
Space.
This bias still seems perpetually contingent
in that these systems and structures and
still affect settled minority communities over forty years later. Forty years is can equal three
generations and this thought alone lends credence to Sojas, (2008,2010) argument
that social injustice as exists within
place and also space. Recent research by Thomas (2000) and Herbert (2008) firmly places the debate that economic, cultural, and racial and gender bias
exists in British planning and resource
allocation. Taking
inspiration from Rex and Tomlinson (1979) and Solomos (1989)
studies, Thomas, (2000) study focused on policy legislation and Herbert’s
study, (2008) conducted case studies, oral archives and interviews. Both
studies differ in their methodology but both found that social planning and
resource allocation for diverse poor minority communities in the UK is
ideologically, contextually and structurally intertwined with race and gender
bias. Both found places and identity spaces differed between minority social
groups and ‘white’ socio political spaces and access to resources.
Thomas
(2000) offers as an example, a planning application for a restaurant
from a ‘foreigner’ being turned down just because of the smell of ‘foreign’
food or ‘nuisance’ the restaurant would cause to settled communities. That this planning application was refused
highlights that whoever this family were, their economic livelihood was
possibly jeopardised and therefore their life experiences hindered in Britain
due to structural constraints imposed upon
them through cultural and racial bias or personal prejudice. Herbert (2008)
analysed the everyday lives of newly arrived
communities in Britain
between the 1960s-1970s. Herbert’s (2008) work set out to research the complex
process of migration settlement and integration and to explore the respondent’s
perceptions and lived experiences of the urban environment. She did this by
taking the 'neighbourhood' as a spatial
setting in which people reside and interact socially to understand how structural ' policy and individual need develop strategies
for survival in settled and newly
arrived environments. . Herbert’s research found that access
to adequate housing was a problem. Newly
arrived families were often placed in or had to rent in predominantly poor and
or ‘racist’ areas. Further, once the
family were housed, she found that newly
arrived families had to move several
times, due to short rental leases, migration, and asylum dispersal policies.
Thus, newly arrived are in a condition of
migration. Policy therefore
appears as an agent, an actant and policy plays out ' will' on life chances.
Racist and predjudiced policy?
Within racism and racialised policies, gender and perceived gender, spaces were also
a significant factor in reducing a woman’s socio-political life. Herbert (2008) discusses that many of her male and female respondents
stated that they perceived or it was seemed
that places were racist. This perception acted like a social spatial force boundary
limiting their access to emotional and capital resources within those spaces. Places
such as public parks, pubs, local shops were given racist and gender properties
by the participants themselves. The very fear of racism was instilled in the
individual just by the thought of
going into some of those places. Furthermore, existing gender divides, in the new city, were propounded
by the gender roles that were bought over into the new country. The men in the communities tended to be able
to travel out of the home and mix more easily with other men and or find
temporary work, therefore gaining some social and economic capital. However, unless a ‘kind’ neighbour helped the women
they remained isolated and contained in the spaces in the home. These studies therefore do highlight race and
gender inequality issues but that they are intertwined and exist in a complex
set of socio political place making policies yet still lived through the
experiential.
Certainly, race, gender, and
disability are as Soja (2008:4) states:
“The
three most familiar forces shaping locational and spatial discrimination...
[But]... their effects should not be
reduced only to segregation... [Their] geographical location, is fundamental in the production of Spatial
injustice and the creation of lasting spatial structures of privilege and
advantage.”. Race
and gender space making is embedded within Place- making. Place -making involves
ideas, policies, strategies and these further involve and embed actants,
processes, perception and properties in the individualised experienced
geographies. (Pierce,
Martin & Murphy 2011) show how the social spatial inequalities in race and gender can be contextualized within
Place- making. They
state that place making itself :
“ involves a set of social, political and
material processes by which people iteratively create and recreate
the experienced geographies in which they live”
As Thomas (2000:1) has also
noticed that
planners themselves do not view: ‘racial
equality as a planning matter’ and argues that race and gender needs should be
integrated in to, not simply added on
to, planning and resource allocation because he feels that: “both the manner in which decisions are made
and the content of those decisions can promote or retard the eradication of
racial discrimination” (Thomas 2000:2) This
form of social injustice can be framed
within and through structural and
subjective networks and become
social/spatial unjust spaces.
In all the studies important variables that
aided or impeded life for the newly arrived communities were
- Culture shock experienced through physical landscapes, roads signs, traffic lights, bus routes all physically and symbolically alien too many newly arrived people.
- No venues, such as religious buildings or resource centers to visit,
- Language barriers and unknown codes and norms that limited or restricted the establishing of new networks.
Such structural,
physical and social boundaries limited newly arrived life experiences and access
to social, cultural and material resources, perpetuating a life cycle of
spatial inequality as well.
These
research studies and theories raise important questions concerning who are
social and private planners designing a city for? Further, this poses the question, who lives in Britain today? Alternatively, how should we live in Britain today? How can a researcher
attempt to begin to understand how urban structural planning and resource and
service allocation perpetuates or eases the place and spatial conditions of the
migrant and or minority experience of living in a deprived
urban city? As this review has outlined there have been a
number of methods, such as the interview method, the survey, the ethnographic case
study that have been used alongside various theory and these have formulated new theories to try and understand
how a newly arrived, migrant or minority ethnic group adapts and finds their
way around and settles into pre-set city boundaries. Our next question might be How can we use
these structural and interactionist methods as a praxis for social change?
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