SIXTH INTERNATIONAL METROPOLIS CONFERENCE

WORKSHOP 10: Urban planning and urban renewal: growth & equity?
Possible urban worlds: The creation of opportunity structures by urban planning and renewal

Tuesday, November 27, 2001
14:00 - 15:30


ORGANIZER

Swiss Red Cross, Migration department (Head: Hans-Beat Moser)

Lic. phil. Hildegard Hungerbühler
Social Anthropologist
Swiss Red Cross
Migration Department
Rainmattstr. 10
CH-3011 Bern
Tel. 0041/31/387 74 06
Fax:0041731/387 74 11
E-Mail: hildegard.hungerbuehler@redcross.ch

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

Goals:
This workshop will adress the question of the steering capacities of urban development policy. We will discuss the limits and possibilities of autonomous political action at the local level. We will also focus on the potential that the local authorities have for setting up programs of communal development that promote integration rather than segregation.

Our discussion will focus on the following aspects of communal political steering:
· urban planning, reurbanisation and city "repair" programs
· the strategies of representation policies, problem definition and city-marketing and their practical and political impacts on political decision making processes

From our point of view these are the key areas in which the dynamics of integration are shaped and defined, even if the emphasis in the general debate on the integration of immigrants in the local context is often put on social work, school politics, public health project, and others.

Our workshop will be based on scientific data collected in a larger research project in the Swiss cities of Bern, Basel and Zurich. The specific experiences of representatives of NGOs and local policy makers will also be addressed.
The mentioned cities have each set up an office for coordinating integration and have published each a strategy paper on integration (policy), aiming at promoting integration through specific programmes and measures. Their are growing pressures on policy makers and NGO's to find quick answers to the very complex problems that cities today are forced to deal with. These pressures are often transferred to social scientists. Research institutions and scientific data on social phenomena are increasingly shaped and determined by the expectations of politicians and social workers to get useful instructions to what to do.
We will give an input to the conference session. It will focus on:
Forms of urban segregation and integration, as they exist in the above mentioned cities, the obvious and hidden dynamics of such processes along with their possible origins and impact (we will relate the data to at least two of the cities mentioned above). To introduce the discussion, we will postulate some thesis about how policy makers, scientists and NGO's provoke, promote, mitigate or prevent processes of integration/segregation.

In the discussion itself we will put emphasis on the following questions:
- What are the steering capacities of local authorities in their respective fields of politics?
- How do these fields of politics influence the dynamics of sociospatial integration/ segregation?
- How do researchers, NGO's and policy makers interact under specific relations of power?

Policy relevance:
The workshop examines the relationship and synergies between policy makers, NGO's and researchers and aims to reinforce them. Some of the participants discuss the subjects mentioned above already on the occasion of a public pannel organized in Bern in June 2001. The participants of the workshop will take the opportunity of the Metropolis Conference to strengthen the network and to build up a structure for a follow up seminar in spring next year in Bern, Switzerland.

Role of researchers:
The participating researchers have all worked in a national research program on migration. The main topic was the dynamics of integration and segregation in the urban contexts of Bern, Zurich and Basel. The data of these studies are now published and will be discussed in the workshop.

Role of NGO's
NGOs participate in the public discourse on integration policy and are at the same time responsible for setting up and realisation of programs. Most of them are partly subsidized and work on the base of contracts with the authorities. At the same time they are independent, and they develop their projects in the framework of their values, ethical principles and the expectations of the private doners. In the workshop we will discuss this field of strain.

Role of policy makers:
The policy makers will explain the steering capacities of local authorities for the discussion. They will illuminate the margins of political action in the specific fields. Together with the other actors in the workshop they will try to find adequate and specific strategies.

DURATION: One session

PARTICIPANTS

Researchers
Dr. Rebekka Ehret
Scientific Advisor to the Delegate for Migration and Integration Issues
of the Government of Basel-Stadt
Postfach
CH- 4001 Basel
Tel. 0041/61/ 267 78 40
Fax: 061/ 267 78 39
Institute of Social Anthropology
University of Basel
Münsterplatz 19
4051 Basel
Tel. 0041/61/267 27 43
E-mail: rebekka.ehret@unibas.ch

Cand. Dr. phil. Angela Stienen
Social Anthropologist, Researcher on migration and processes of integration/segregation in Swiss cities (Swiss National Research Project) as well as so-called third-world cities (Research Project in Colombia).
University of Bern
Department of Social Anthropology
Länggassstr. 49 a
3012 Bern
Tel: 0041/31/312 59 92
Fax: 0041/31/631 42 12
E-mail: stienen@ethno.unibe.ch

Gianni d'Amato
Ph.D. in Political Science and M.A. in Sociology
Project manager (Knowledge Tranfer)
Swiss Forum for Migration Studies at the
University of Neuchâtel
Terreaux 1
CH-2000 Neuchâtel
Tel :0041 32 718 39 20
Fax : 0041 32 718 39 21
E-mail : gianni.damato@unine.ch

Policy makers/local government
Dr. Annemarie Sancar
Social Anthropologist
Falkenhöheweg 8
CH-3012 Bern
Tel. 0041/31/ 301 60 06/07
E-mail: annemarie.sancar@cfd-ch.org
Former researcher in the COST A2 project of "Multicultural cities" directed by John Rex
Actually a member of the local council (legislative) of the city of Berne and responsible of the migration desk of a NGO.
Member of the steering committee of the Information office for the Questions of Immigrants in Berne.

Lic. phil. Brigit Wehrli-Schindler (head) and Lic. phil. Barbara Emmenegger
Office for urban development, City of Zurich
Stadthaus,
CH-8022 Zürich
Tel. 00411 216 36 62
Fax 00411 216 36 81
E-mail: brigit.wehrli@prd.stzh.ch
barbara.emmenegger@prd.stzh.ch

NGO's
Hildegard Hungerbühler
Social Anthropologist
Swiss Red Cross
Migration Department
Rainmattstr. 10
CH-3011 Bern
Tel. 0041/31/387 74 06
Fax: 0041/31/387 74 11
E-Mail: hildegard.hungerbuehler@redcross.ch

International participants:
Juan Velasquez
Master in Human Geography and Ethnology
Stockholm University
Sweden
juan.velasquez@humangeo.su.se

Cand. Dr. phil. Marina Gartzia
Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bern
And University of Deusto, Bilbao (Spain)
Researcher on urban development and conflict
Tel. 0041 31 312 59 92
E-mail: margartzia@freesurf.ch

Prof. Dr. Jon Leonardo Aurtenetxe
Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociología
Universidad de Deusto
Bilbao (Spain)
Tel: 944139320
Fax: 944139121
E-mail: leonardo@orion.deusto.es

Camilla Perrone (PhD student)
Department of Urban and Regional Planning
Faculty of Architecture
University of Florence
Via Micheli 2, I-50121
Florence Italy
cperrone@unifi.it