Within the context of the growing polarisation and fragmentation of the urban landscape, this paper presents a computational typology applicable to the study of minority communities, both ethnic and religious, which is useful in understanding their spatial distribution and juxtaposition at neighbourhood levels. The typology has been applied to multicultural London with the use of the 2001 Census, in which there were questions on ethnicity and religion. The landscape of religion is found to be more highly segregated in contrast to the landscape of ethnicity. Furthermore, on the basis of a preliminary analysis of indicator variables, minorities seem on aggregate to be in an improved situation given a level of residential segregation, with the exception of residents of segregated Asian-Bangladeshi areas for ethnicity and residents of segregated Muslim areas for religion. This questions the generally held view that segregation in a multicultural society is undesirable per se and suggests that a ‘one size fits all’ government policy towards residential segregation is insufficiently perceptive. The typology introduced here should facilitate a more critically informed approach to multiculturalism and the contemporary city.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AminA, 2005, “Local community on trial”Economy and Society34612–633
2.
AnthiasFYuval-DavisN, 1992Racialized Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class and the Anti-Racist Struggle (Routledge, London)
3.
AtkinsonRFlintJ, 2004, “Fortress UK? Gated communities, the spatial revolt of elites and time – space trajectories of segregation”Housing Studies19875–892
4.
BaumanM, 2002, “Migrant settlement, religion and phases of diaspora”Migration3393–117
BeckU, 2004, “Cosmopolitan realism: On the distinction between cosmopolitanism in philosophy and the social sciences”Global Networks4131–156
7.
BlochA, 2002The Migration and Settlement of Refugees in Britain (Palgrave, New York)
8.
BrimicombeA, 2000, “Constructing and evaluating contextual indices using GIS: A case of primary school performance tables”Environment and Planning A321909–1933
9.
BurnleyI, 1999, “Levels of immigrant residential concentration in Sydney and their relationship with disadvantage”Urban Studies361295–1315
MasseyDDentonN, 1988, “The dimensions of residential segregation”Social Forces67281–315
27.
MasseyDFischerM, 2000, “How segregation concentrates poverty”Ethnic and Racial Studies23670–691
28.
MitchellK, 2004, “Geographies of identity: Multiculturalism unplugged”Progress in Human Geography28641–651
29.
ModoodTBerthoudRLakeyJNazrooJSmithPVirdeeSBeishonS, 1997Ethnic Minorities in Britain: Diversity and DisadvantagePolicy Studies Institute, 50 Hanson Street, London
30.
MorphetC, 1992, “The interpretation of small area census data”Area2463–72
31.
MorrillR, 1991, “On the measure of geographic segregation”Geography Research Forum1125–36
32.
NegroponteN, 1995Being Digital (Knopf, New York)
33.
NijmanP, 2000, “The paradigmatic city”Annals of the Association of American Geographers90135–145
34.
PeachC, 1996a, “The meaning of segregation”Planning Practice and Research11137–150
35.
PeachC, 1996b, “Does Britain have ghettos?”Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series22216–235
36.
PeachC, 1999, “London and New York: Contrasts in British and American models of segregation”International Journal of Population Geography5319–351
37.
PeachC, 2002, “Social geography: New religions and ethnoburbs—contrasts with cultural geography”Progress in Human Geography26252–260
38.
PhillipsD, 2006, “Parallel lives? Challenging discourses of British Muslim self-segregation”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space2425–40
39.
PoulsenMJohnstonRForrestJ, 2001, “Intraurban ethnic enclaves: Introducing a knowledge-based classification method”Environment and Planning A332071–2082
40.
PoulsenMForrestJJohnstonR, 2002, “From modern to postmodern? Contemporary ethnic residential segregation in four US metropolitan areas”Cities19161–172
41.
ReardonSFirebaughG, 2002, “Measures of multigroup segregation”Sociological Methodology3233–67
42.
ReardonSO'SullivanD, 2004, “Measures of spatial segregation”Sociological Methodology34121–162
43.
RunnymedeTrust, 2000The Future of Multi-ethnic Britain: The Parekh Report (Profile Books, London)
44.
SojaE, 1996Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-imagined Places (Blackwell, Oxford)
45.
ThompsonD, (Ed.), 1995The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (Oxford University Press, Oxford)
46.
UrryJ, 2000, “Mobile sociology”British Journal of Sociology51185–203
47.
WellerP, 2004, “Identity, politics and future(s) of religion in the UK: The case of the religion questions in the 2001 decennial census”Journal of Contemporary Religion193–21
48.
WerbnerP, 2001, “Metaphors of spatiality and networks in the plural city: A critique of the ethnic enclave debate”Sociology35671–693
49.
WhiteM, 1986, “Segregation and diversity measures in population distribution”Population Index52198–221
50.
WongD, 2003, “Spatial decomposition of segregation indices: A framework towards measuring segregation at multiple levels”Geographical Analysis35179–194
