Living With Difference – Interventions for Just Cities
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https://hdl.handle.net/10037/24092Date
2021-12-02Type
Journal articleTidsskriftartikkel
Peer reviewed
Abstract
Most cities, including small and medium ones, experience diverse multicultural populations.
The sustainability of such diverse cities requires them to be capable of living with differences
and diversity without producing new social inequalities and sustaining old ones. We argue that
there is a need for a new conceptualization with which to approach cultural diversity, differences and similarities in urban planning, in line with Gressgård and Jensens’ (2016) quest to
understand the relationship between migrants and cities. This special issue analyzes several
initiatives aiming at facilitating encounters and creating urban spaces for cross-cultural interaction, participation, and dialogue. The articles stem from the research project Sustainable diverse
cities: Innovation in integration (Cit-egration),
1
which explores the role of various initiatives to
create spaces of co-existence and interaction across differences and to develop new concepts
and understandings of just cities. The contributing articles share the understanding that diverse
cities consist of and benefit from a multitude of encounters. The articles present analyses based
on initiatives and activities in the small- and medium-sized cities Bodø and Tromsø in Norway
and Hundested and Halsnæs in Denmark. Small- and medium-sized cities are the most common in the Nordic countries. Hence, there is a need to understand how diversity is approached
in such cities. Small- and medium-sized cities also serve as interesting laboratories for studying
these themes due to their complex yet small scale.
The collection starts with analysing a map of how urban spaces are used as meeting places by
different groups of urban dwellers. It then focuses on how art- and culture-based interventions
and activities in voluntary organizations hold potential for living with, crossing and negotiating differences. We then turn to a discussion of how local diversity policies are designed and
implemented before concluding with an insightful look at how inhabitants engage with everyday hospitality when faced with emergency and how this engagement challenges the Nordic
welfare states’ current approaches toward refugees. This provides different perspectives on the
relation between urban planning and development and diverse populations in the city. It also
provides a line of thinking moving from urban (geographical) spaces, via encounters in such
places, to local diversity policies and finally an approach that draw the lines from encounters
to national state policies.
Publisher
Helsinki University PressCitation
Aure Ma, Førde A. Living With Difference – Interventions for Just Cities. Nordic Journal of Migration Research. 2021;11(4):376-382Metadata
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