“We are in a spatial moment.”1Design Studio for Social Intervention (ds4si), 2011More Info → Around the world, there has never been a time when the role and possibilities of public space have been so prominent in the news and on social media as now. From Tahrir Square in Cairo to SlutWalks that originated in Toronto, new spatial imaginaries are opening up. New spaces are being created and used as sites of recreation, such as New York City’s High Line, a disused elevated rail bed that is now a highly used urban park. Other spaces, such as Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market, represent “cosmopolitan canopies,” as described by sociologist Elijah Anderson, where there is racial, ethnic, and class intermixing in civil and friendly ways.

Road spaces around the world are being reimagined. In Copenhagen, as in the Dutch woonerven, and in streets such as London’s Exhibition Road, the concept of “shared space” removes the usual separation of cars, pedestrians, and other road users and devices so that curbs, road lines, signs, and signals are woven into a “cities for people” narrative of public space. In this way, walking, cycling, shopping, and driving cars are integral to the “livable” or “complete” street.

“I argue it is possible to plan, design, and maintain ‘culturally inclusive spaces,’ but this necessitates, among other things, a paradigm shift in our thinking from multi– to interculturalism.”

Yet, designing inclusive, or at least nonexclusive public space faces many obstacles and challenges in engaging with difference, diversity, and cultural heterogeneity in creative and productive ways. Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris argues that many public areas have “reinforced divisions based upon class, race, age, or ethnicity.”2Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, “Children’s Common Grounds: A Study of Intergroup Relations Among Children in Public Settings,” Journal of the American Planning Association 69, no. 2 (2003): 130–43. Low et al. are even more forthright: “In this new century, we are facing a different kind of threat to public space—not one of disuse, but of patterns of design and management that exclude some people and reduce social and cultural diversity.”3Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2005More Info → I argue it is possible to plan, design, and maintain “culturally inclusive spaces,” but this necessitates, among other things, a paradigm shift in our thinking from multi– to interculturalism.

Interculturalism

Multiculturalist discourses have fallen short in considering the broader impacts of culture on planning and sustainability. James Tully has noted in his 1995 book Strange Multiplicity that multiculturalism, as it has been conceived, does not require any fundamental change in thinking. Our societies, he argues, are intercultural rather than multicultural because of cross-cultural overlap, interaction, and negotiation—the “politics of recognition”—that occur out of necessity in the formation of our society. Ash Amin calls this the “negotiation of difference within local micropublics of everyday interaction.”4Ash Amin, “Ethnicity and the Multicultural City: Living with Diversity,” Environment and Planning A 34, no. 6 (2002): 959–80. An acknowledgment of this dynamic cultural nature of society—both the “politics of recognition” and “negotiation of difference”—is a key distinction between intercultural and multicultural theory, demanding a culturally competent and inclusive approach to both planning and policymaking.

Jude Bloomfield and Franco Bianchini make perhaps the most eloquent argument, the full implications of which should be fully understood by politicians, planners, and policymakers:

The interculturalism approach goes beyond opportunities and respect for existing cultural differences, to the pluralist transformation of public space, civic culture and institutions…city governments should promote cross-fertilisation across all cultural boundaries, between ‘majority’ and ‘minorities’, ‘dominant’ and ‘sub’ cultures, localities, classes, faiths, disciplines and genres, as the source of cultural, social, political and economic innovation.5Jude Bloomfield and Franco Bianchini, Planning for the Cosmopolitan City: A Research Report for Birmingham City Council (Leicester: Comedia, International Cultural Planning and Policy Unit, 2002).

Leonie Sandercock, however, appeals to our emotions: “I dream of a city of bread and festivals, where those who don’t have the bread aren’t excluded from the carnival. I dream of a city in which action grows out of knowledge and understanding.” This city, Sandercock explains, would value social justice over balanced budgets, neighborhood discussion before decisions, and its very possibility should seduce.6London: Continuum, 2003More Info →

Imagine, for a moment, a mayor or city leadership group who had the courage to move in these directions; to contaminate and hybridize across cultures; to feel seduced by the city—a mayor or leadership group that refused to go with the status quo, with what is probable, but instead focused on what is possible. The transformation of Broadway and the High Line under Mayor Michael Bloomberg are small but highly significant examples of possibility, as was the more ambitious development and implementation of London’s congestion charge under Mayor Ken Livingstone, or the “Copenhagen Miracle” under a succession of mayors since the 1960s and the iconic urbanist Jan Gehl. However, the only citywide, culture-shifting examples that even come close to intercultural urban planning are the double acts of Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa who literally performed (in the case of Mockus) the most celebrated of urban transformations in Bogotá, Colombia, and more recently the social urbanism–inspired transformation of Medellín, Colombia.

Designing, planning, and maintaining culturally inclusive spaces

The uneven development of many public spaces is a classic case of spatial injustice. Most public spaces serve as meeting places for people who already know each other, and many open spaces are sites of tension and racism that reinforce intergroup separation.7Bristol: The Policy Press, 2006More Info → Certain subgroups express additional difference-based barriers that concern language, disabilities, gender identity, and religion.

“How, then, do we get to Anderson’s ‘cosmopolitan canopy’ or Bloomfield and Bianchini’s intercultural dream where ‘different cultures intersect, “contaminate” each other and hybridize?’”

How, then, do we get to Anderson’s “cosmopolitan canopy” or Bloomfield and Bianchini’s intercultural dream where “different cultures intersect, ‘contaminate’ each other and hybridize?”8Bloomfield and Bianchini, Planning for the Cosmopolitan City, 6. These observations and ideas underlie Gordon Allport’s “contact theory,” which posits that interactions between members of different groups can reduce intergroup prejudice under the right conditions. Clearly, parks, public spaces, markets, and streets have a role to play. Unfortunately, culturally inclusive spaces—those designed intentionally around intercultural engagement, the recognition of difference, diversity, and cultural heterogeneity—have not been a major focus of study in the planning literature, nor are they well understood by practicing urban designers, planners, and policymakers.9Sandeep Kumar and George Martin, “A Case for Culturally Responsive Urban Design,” Ontario Planning Journal 19, no. 5 (2004): 5–7.

Public spaces can be sites of huge intercultural opportunity. Organized events, such as football matches, festivals, or youth group activities, may offer important opportunities for intergroup contact and for generating shared experiences. People who have emigrated from one country and culture to another tend to use public open spaces, community gardens, and parks to gather and congregate in ways that are reminiscent of their home country, transforming the parks of their adoptive community into familiar spaces, creating an “autotopography” that links their daily practices and life experiences to a deep sense of place. In effect, they are writing their cultural stories on the land- or cityscape. This is a type of cultural place-making and is commonly done in community gardens through the growth and celebration of culturally appropriate foods.10Teresa Mares and Devon Peña, “Environmental and Food Justice: Toward Local, Slow and Deep Food Systems,” in Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class and Sustainability, ed. Alison Hope Alkon and Julian Agyeman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 197–219.

When planning and (re)designing inclusive spaces, it is useful to understand both Doreen Massey’s point that places and spaces are “constantly shifting articulations of social relations through time”11Doreen Massey, “Places and Their Pasts,” History Workshop Journal 39, no. 1 (1995): 182–92. and, related, Julie Guthman’s question, which is not “Who is at the table?” but “Who is setting the table?”12Julie Guthman, “‘If They Only Knew’: Color Blindness and Universalism in California Alternative Food Institutions,” The Professional Geographer 60, no. 3 (2008): 387–97. The first principle of culturally inclusive practice is therefore recognition that “community” is a fluid notion, constantly in flux. It is critically important to draw from different cultures and subcultures and to include a variety of user-derived options. It is also important to focus efforts aimed at designing inclusive spaces on places that accommodate meaningful interaction among users, rather than simply on areas with the greatest number of people crossing paths.13London: Commission for Racial Equality, 2007More Info →

But, Ali Madanipour cautions: “If public spaces are produced and managed by narrow interests, they are bound to become exclusive places.”14London: Routledge, 2010More Info → Therefore, the planning process must be inclusive. Planners are advised to heed Massey and forget about a monolithic “public” or the “average” user and instead begin the open space planning process with “deep knowledge” of the preferences of the actual communities who are likely to use those spaces.15Sydney: University of Western Sydney, Centre for Cultural Research, 2008More Info → Yet, Yasminah Beebejaun reminds us that “complexities exist both within and between cultures. One issue for planning in culturally diverse contexts is that different cultures, subcultures, and generations have different assumptions and conventions about who uses public space…”16Yasminah Beebeejaun, “The Participation Trap: The Limitations of Participation for Ethnic and Racial Groups,” International Planning Studies 11, no. 1 (2006): 3–18.

Generating deep knowledge may involve ethnographic work to learn about the cultural backgrounds, perceptions, and needs of those in the local community regarding open space use.17Ashley Graves Lanfer and Madeleine Taylor, Immigrant Engagement in Public Open Space: Strategies for the New Boston (Boston, MA: Barr Foundation, 2005). Equally important is an understanding of how users’ past experiences in public spaces have shaped their use of or aspirations for the space now and in the future.18Lownsbrough and Beunderman, Equally Spaced? Fred Kent and others believe the best ideas for the future come from the community, and they should be actively engaged in creating public spaces at every stage of the process.19Fred Kent, “Place Making Around the World,” Urban Land (August 2008): 58–65.

Following good design principles is fundamental in creating high-quality open space but not sufficient in ensuring inclusivity. A culturally inclusive space should offer amenities, rules, and landscapes that accommodate people of all ages and backgrounds. Designers can create spaces that resemble “home,” such as the Ryerson University student-led designs based on Bollywood for the Gerrard India Bazaar, an ethnic business enclave in East Toronto.20Kumar and Martin, “A Case for Culturally Responsive Urban Design.” Officials can also assign culturally relevant names (toponyms) in order to promote a specific sense of identity.21Two examples of toponyms are Mount McKinley in Alaska, renamed Denali, and Ayers Rock in Australia, now Uluru. For more on this application of toponyms, see Blake van Velden and Dory Reeves, “Intercultural Public Spaces” (presentation at the International Planning Conference, Christchurch, New Zealand, April 20–23, 2010). Inclusive spaces must provide appropriate seating (not the “standard” park bench) for individuals or the nuclear family, and also for extended families and groups of individuals simply hoping to socialize. Safety is a major barrier to park usage: people report feeling unsafe in spaces with overgrown vegetation, insufficient lighting, and high walls.22CABE, 2010More Info →

Design and utility blend easily. Sometimes simply better design and/or maintenance of existing facilities can resolve problems instead of building new facilities.23See
→Low et al., Rethinking Urban Parks.
→Out and About in Penrith.
Equally Spaced?
Therefore, the “use” stage of open space development must include proper maintenance and management. Additionally, open-space management and programming staff must adopt new, culturally competent approaches to interacting with diverse users. Hiring staff who resemble users or who speak the language of diverse users can go far in reducing perceptions of discrimination, which has been shown to be an important deterrent. Targeted marketing strategies could also be used to respond to the diverse needs of various groups in order to re-establish a park as a welcoming place for all.24Margaret Arnold and Kimberly Shinew, “The Role of Gender, Race, and Income on Park Use Constraints,” Journal of Park and Recreation Administration 16, no. 4 (1998): 39–56.

Accessibility depends not only on the location of parks, but also on the built environment that surrounds them. Good street lighting, adequate sidewalks, street interconnectivity, local land use, infrastructure, and facility maintenance—the so-called “whole journey approach”—all influence when and how urban residents participate in outdoor recreation.25→Emily Talen, Design for Diversity: Exploring Socially Mixed Neighborhoods (Boston, MA: Architectural Press/Elsevier, 2008).
→Juan Sanchez, “An Assessment and Analysis of Issues and Patterns Associated with the Utilization of Open Spaces by Latino Immigrants in an Urban Neighborhood in Boston” (unpublished master’s thesis, Tufts University, 2010).
Numerous studies, especially in the United States and United Kingdom, have shown that there are fewer accessible parks and public spaces in minority and economically disadvantaged areas. In addition, the parks and spaces in these neighborhoods also tend to be of lower quality, making quantity and quality especially important in low-income communities.26CABE, 2010More Info → If the community is not helping “set the table” during the design process, spaces attempting to cater to everyone can tend to be impersonal.

Cultural competency: Toward culturally inclusive practice

What is the role of the planning and urban design professional in the shift toward interculturalism? It is important to note that the placemaking professions most closely associated with the policy, planning, design, and development of public and open spaces are not known for their tolerance of difference, diversity, or cultural heterogeneity. There is a solid case to be made that the training, recruitment, and retention of professionals who more fully reflect the makeup of our “cities of difference,” as Ruth Fincher and Jane Jacobs called them in their 1998 book of the same title, would help speed the production, quality, and maintenance of culturally inclusive spaces, and, critically, the embedding and mainstreaming of culturally inclusive practice within those professions. Until that mainstreaming happens, current professionals must take added care to ensure they embark on culturally inclusive practices where difference and diversity are intentional and are represented throughout the design process.

“Here, I am adding another layer by arguing that the provision of high-quality, culturally inclusive spaces is essential in any society that ‘embodies a dynamic and multi-faceted culture.’”

The move toward more just environments will require rethinking our paradigms, policies, and plans for public spaces. Elsewhere, I have taken a necessarily broad look at what these plans might look like through the lenses of space as security, resistance, and possibility.27Zed Books, 2013More Info → I argued that the sense of possibility and hope that was emerging in democratic and democratizing projects, spaces, and places around the world could serve as models to inform the creation of new spaces along lines more befitting the notion of just environments. Here, I am adding another layer by arguing that the provision of high-quality, culturally inclusive spaces is essential in any society that “embodies a dynamic and multi-faceted culture.”28Clare Rishbeth, “Ethnic minority groups and the design of public open space: an inclusive landscape?” Landscape Research 26, no. 4 (2001): 351–66.

However, we must not fall into a deterministic trap: we must recognize the limitations of design to solve deep social injustices. There are two aspects to this. First, as Phil Wood and Charles Landry point out:

The intercultural city depends on more than a design challenge. It derives from a central notion that people are developing a shared future whereby each individual feels they have something to contribute in shaping, making and co-creating a joint endeavor. A thousand tiny transformations will create an atmosphere in public space that feels open and where all feel safe and valued.29Routledge, 2008More Info →

Second, as Jason Byrne and Jennifer Wolch note: “The cultural landscape perspective shows us how landscapes can become racialized, shifting the scale of environmental injustice from the home, the factory, or the neighborhood to entire landscapes.”30Jason Byrne and Jennifer Wolch, “Nature, Race, and Parks: Past Research and Future Directions for Geographic Research.” Progress in Human Geography 33 (2009): 743–65.

In addition, community-based planning processes surrounding open space may foster collaboration during planning sessions, but may not radically alter the lack of power of disadvantaged participants after the process has concluded. Similarly, there is a threat that residents engaged in planning for open space may create more exclusive, rather than more inclusive, spaces. Clearly, there is a role for the planner to advocate on behalf of inclusivity, recognizing that this may require different treatment of individuals and groups based on need.31Beebeejaun, “The Participation Trap.”

Let’s start from a position of humility. Do we want to live in a world where we tolerate the tedium and misery of cities of indifference, or do we want to live in cities where we recognize, understand, and engage with difference, diversity, and cultural heterogeneity that could transform civic institutions, the public realm, its discourses, and city management practices? As Wood and Landry argue: “If we want the intercultural city, we cannot leave it to chance.”

References:

1
Design Studio for Social Intervention (ds4si), 2011More Info →
2
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, “Children’s Common Grounds: A Study of Intergroup Relations Among Children in Public Settings,” Journal of the American Planning Association 69, no. 2 (2003): 130–43.
3
Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2005More Info →
4
Ash Amin, “Ethnicity and the Multicultural City: Living with Diversity,” Environment and Planning A 34, no. 6 (2002): 959–80.
5
Jude Bloomfield and Franco Bianchini, Planning for the Cosmopolitan City: A Research Report for Birmingham City Council (Leicester: Comedia, International Cultural Planning and Policy Unit, 2002).
6
London: Continuum, 2003More Info →
7
Bristol: The Policy Press, 2006More Info →
8
Bloomfield and Bianchini, Planning for the Cosmopolitan City, 6.
9
Sandeep Kumar and George Martin, “A Case for Culturally Responsive Urban Design,” Ontario Planning Journal 19, no. 5 (2004): 5–7.
10
Teresa Mares and Devon Peña, “Environmental and Food Justice: Toward Local, Slow and Deep Food Systems,” in Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class and Sustainability, ed. Alison Hope Alkon and Julian Agyeman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 197–219.
11
Doreen Massey, “Places and Their Pasts,” History Workshop Journal 39, no. 1 (1995): 182–92.
12
Julie Guthman, “‘If They Only Knew’: Color Blindness and Universalism in California Alternative Food Institutions,” The Professional Geographer 60, no. 3 (2008): 387–97.
13
London: Commission for Racial Equality, 2007More Info →
14
London: Routledge, 2010More Info →
15
Sydney: University of Western Sydney, Centre for Cultural Research, 2008More Info →
16
Yasminah Beebeejaun, “The Participation Trap: The Limitations of Participation for Ethnic and Racial Groups,” International Planning Studies 11, no. 1 (2006): 3–18.
17
Ashley Graves Lanfer and Madeleine Taylor, Immigrant Engagement in Public Open Space: Strategies for the New Boston (Boston, MA: Barr Foundation, 2005).
18
Lownsbrough and Beunderman, Equally Spaced?
19
Fred Kent, “Place Making Around the World,” Urban Land (August 2008): 58–65.
20
Kumar and Martin, “A Case for Culturally Responsive Urban Design.”
21
Two examples of toponyms are Mount McKinley in Alaska, renamed Denali, and Ayers Rock in Australia, now Uluru. For more on this application of toponyms, see Blake van Velden and Dory Reeves, “Intercultural Public Spaces” (presentation at the International Planning Conference, Christchurch, New Zealand, April 20–23, 2010).
22
CABE, 2010More Info →
23
See
→Low et al., Rethinking Urban Parks.
→Out and About in Penrith.
Equally Spaced?
24
Margaret Arnold and Kimberly Shinew, “The Role of Gender, Race, and Income on Park Use Constraints,” Journal of Park and Recreation Administration 16, no. 4 (1998): 39–56.
25
→Emily Talen, Design for Diversity: Exploring Socially Mixed Neighborhoods (Boston, MA: Architectural Press/Elsevier, 2008).
→Juan Sanchez, “An Assessment and Analysis of Issues and Patterns Associated with the Utilization of Open Spaces by Latino Immigrants in an Urban Neighborhood in Boston” (unpublished master’s thesis, Tufts University, 2010).
26
CABE, 2010More Info →
27
Zed Books, 2013More Info →
28
Clare Rishbeth, “Ethnic minority groups and the design of public open space: an inclusive landscape?” Landscape Research 26, no. 4 (2001): 351–66.
29
Routledge, 2008More Info →
30
Jason Byrne and Jennifer Wolch, “Nature, Race, and Parks: Past Research and Future Directions for Geographic Research.” Progress in Human Geography 33 (2009): 743–65.
31
Beebeejaun, “The Participation Trap.”