Ethnoplaces and the discontents of local planning. Paper to be presented at the Sixth international Metropolis Conference 26-30 November 2001. Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Juan Velásquez, Cand. PhD.

Department of Human Geography

Stockholm University

106 91 STOCKHOLM - SWEDEN

Juan.Velasquez@humangeo.su.se

Abstract

Ethnic segregation in Sweden is to be found in housing complexes that work as some kind of waiting rum for migrants and refugees entering the society after displacement or for re-adapting to society after regional migration. They are settlements with a recognisable structure inspired in modernistic architecture that can be called ethnoplaces. As such, ethnoplaces have been the focus for critique and the target for different policy measures as far as in these places we fine many persons still on the verge of society, even after been permanent settlers in the same locality for decades. For improving the integration of immigrants into the society the parliament launched the Metropolitan Initiative MI in 1998, intending to implement local development agreements based in the local inhabitants participation that even aim to stimulate higher economic growth in 24 of the many ethnoplaces in the Swedish metropolitan areas.

These development agreements work along lines of collaboration between professionals from different dependencies and institutions. But when the local community claims to collaborate with the planers as one actor it generates some problems. The first problem is that the local community. s . representative. lacks power in this interaction. For that reason its mandate is marginal for deciding the future of the places. The planers. argument on that point is that they work on decisions from the politicians, which in turn are the representatives elected by the community. A problem attached to this is that electoral participation is very low in ethnoplaces. Other problem is that the community is multicultural and the way in which this representative becomes elected to the local planning group is probably even more problematic. It is not the result of democratic consultations with the local citizens. In sum, the planners interact with a partner that they choose by them selves, and that in high degree lacks political legitimacy.

The main goal with this work is to perform an introduction to the context of current planning and the planners. experiences in Alby, an ethnoplace in Botkyrka municipality . south of Stockholm. The questions for helping to achieve this aim are what is the social-historical context of Swedish segregation and How do the planners relate to introducing the local population to society in an ethnoplace like Alby? The study focuses on some important aspects that prevent planners from doing a better work. The perspective is contributing to the deconstruction of the social complexities of what scholars, planners and professionals still see as . immigrant localities. . It is an exercise of . deconstruction. pretending to put some taken for granted premises under light, specially the preconditions that generate ethnoplaces. This work is a contribution for showing new insights in order to . reconstruct. our comprehension of ethnoplaces by deconstructing the relation that societies had to them.

Planning has been an instrument for the relations of political power in modernity. In these relations governing groups appropriate space for their urban visions. For example in the industrial society this relation ran along the line of class in which the bourgeoisie stigmatise the . slum. of working classes. Space, place and landscape are highly interesting in planning as far as planning and planners works as spearheads commanding the implementation of visions from the . mainstream society. . They are exercising sovereignty in places there the population may have other alternative visions. It is in that sense that some space-place tensions emerge. For now this tensions runs in the more sophisticated context of landscape generation that emerges from a planning steaming from valuations used to make places attractive. An important pivot sustaining these valuations are grounded in Historic retrospection used to contrast places against the modernity, and modernist architecture and way of life. Some important popular movements and medial processes are very involved in historic retrospection and despite its traditional fashion; it works as some avant-garde of post-modern spatial practices against regulatory and top down way of contemporary planning. For introducing corrections, some bottom up perspective has been encouraged even from top down agendas commanded by governments as the Swedish Metropolitan initiative, the European Urban-initiative and the UN Habitat agenda. These agendas had been implemented with a collaborative planning, grown up during decades but that had become insufficient for coping with integration of migrants into mainstream society, especially in heterogeneous communities such as ethnoplaces. As a way out of the collaborative agendas shortages it is suggested to look at the inhabitants practices. Those practices that in fact are daily implementing some shift from merely collaboration to more interactive dialog. Would this inspire planners for achieving a more communicative planning in the future?

 Keywords: Ethnoplaces, Urban Renewal, Cultural Diversity, Communicative Planning, Dialog, Alby, Sweden