Urban planning and the challenge of superdiversity

Abstract

This chapter explores the role of urban planning in responding to migration-related superdiversity. While previous research has been undertaken on urban planning and the multicultural city as well as planning and diversity in the city, little attention to date has focused on the challenges of increasing superdiversity for urban planning. Urban planning has engaged with diversity in three main ways: i) to manage social difference in situations where difference has been associated with disadvantage or interpreted as disorderly; ii) to commodify and use the features of cities for urban tourism or urban regeneration purposes; and iii) to regulate public spaces and facilities where there is conflict over their use between ethnic groups. In relation to superdiversity, this means that a broad view of urban planning is required, and which involves urban planning being defined as a key element of wider strategies of urban governance and management. In so doing, urban planners need to think about how to balance competing interests, how to recognise and address specific needs, and how to respond to people in increasingly diversified (or diversifying) settings.