In from the Periphery: Becoming (G)locally Cosmopolitan in Springvale

Abstract How might notions of what is cosmopolitan be geographically reinterpreted through the diverse settlement of recent migrants and refugees in Australia? This article brings this question to bear on Springvale, a suburb in the Australian city of Melbourne, discussing the area’s geographical circulation of people, businesses and products as a means of understanding the interstices between marginalised cultures or traditions and the role of architecture and the built environment in this context. Discussion of these questions involves the description of the physical and spatial environment of Springvale, concentrating on its commercial and industrial centres. In part, this illustrates the marginalisation of certain buildings and uses, but also how the process of establishing new kinds of activity and identity alters the nature of environments. The result is that these perceptually and geographically peripheral zones are paradoxically becoming centres in a diversifying metropolis, affording new nodes of usage and inhabitation that are arguably becoming sites of “local cosmopolitanism.”