Making the Most of Diversity? The Intercultural City Project and a Rescaled Version of Diversity in Auckland,New Zealand

Abstract

Contemporary policy approaches to ‘cultural diversity’ are increasingly focusing on ‘the urban’, marking a considerable departure from configurations like biculturalism and multiculturalism in which the space of the nation was viewed as the key arena for the making of diverse and cohesive societies. In this context, this paper analyses the Intercultural City Project (ICP), a multicity planning initiative developed by the private consultancy Comedia, focusing on the ICP’s deployment in Auckland, New Zealand, where it was used to rethink issues surrounding diversity and urban planning. The analysis focuses on three key issues that emerge in the ICP: the targeting of cultural diversity and interaction; the rescaled ‘urban’ version of diversity; and the connections between this model of diversity and neo-liberal urban policies.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

ACC (Auckland City Council) (2004) Auckland’s CBD into the future strategy. ACC, Auckland.

ACC (2005) Snapshot: Auckland’s creative industries: understanding our city. ACC, Auckland.

ACC (2006) Auckland city’s long-term plan 2006–2016. ACC, Auckland.

ACC (2007) Amendments to Auckland City Council’s long-term plan 2006–2016. ACC, Auckland.

ACC (2008a) Annual report 2007/2008. ACC, Auckland.

ACC (2008b) Art in public places. ACC, Auckland.

ACC (2008c) Auckland CBD into the future: action plan 2008–2011. ACC, Auckland.

ACC (2008d) Our collective Taonga: places for people, places for nature. ACC, Auckland.

ACC (2009) Auckland City Council’s 10 year plan 2009–2019. ACC, Auckland.

10.

Allport

G. W.

(1954) The Nature of Prejudice. London: Routledge.

11.

Amin

(2002) Ethnicity and the multicultural city: living with diversity, Environment and Planning A, 34, pp. 959–980.

12.

Amin

(2006) The good city, Urban Studies, 43, pp. 1009–1023.

13.

Arbona

J. M.

(2007) New-liberal ruptures: local political entities and neighbourhood networks in El Alto, Bolivia, Geoforum, 1, pp. 127–137.

14.

Auckland Regional Council and Friesen

(2007) Immigration and ethnicity in the Auckland region. Auckland Regional Council, Auckland.

15.

Auckland Regional Growth Forum (1999) Auckland regional growth strategy 2050: a vision for managing growth in the Auckland region. Auckland Regional Council, Auckland.

16.

Beaumont

Nicholls

(2008) Plural governance, participation and democracy in cities, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32, pp. 87–94.

17.

Brecknock Consulting (2006) Intercultural city: making the most of diversity: Auckland case study report. Brecknock Consulting, for Auckland City Council, Adelaide.

18.

Brenner

(2002) Cities and the geographies of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’, Antipode, 34, pp. 349–379.

19.

Bromell

(2008) Ethnicity, identity and public policy: critical perspectives on multiculturalism. Institute of Policy Studies, Victoria University, Wellington.

20.

Chile

L. M.

(2002) The imported underclass: poverty and social exclusion of black African refugees in Aotearoa New Zealand, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 43, pp. 355–366.

21.

Collins

F. L.

(2006) Making Asian students, making students Asian: the racialisation of export education in Auckland, New Zealand, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 47, pp. 217–234.

22.

Comedia (2004) The intercultural city: themes (http://www.interculturalcity.com/themes.htm).

23.

Dixon

J. E.

Eriksen

N. J.

Crawford

J. L.

Berke

(1997) Planning under a co-operative mandate: new plans for New Zealand, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 40, pp. 603–614.

24.

Dunn

Thompson

Hanna

. (2001) Multicultural policy within local government in Australia, Urban Studies, 38, pp. 2477–2494.

25.

Fleras

Spoonley

(1999) Recalling Aotearoa: Indigenous Politics and Ethnic Relations in New Zealand. Auckland: Oxford University Press.

26.

Florida

(2002) Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books.

27.

Friesen

(2006) Planning for cultural diversity, in: Thomson-Fawcett

Freeman

(Eds) Living Together: Towards Inclusive Communities in New Zealand, pp. 57–76. Dunedin: Otago University Press.

28.

Goonewardena

Kipfer

(2005) Spaces of difference: reflections from Toronto on multiculturalism, bourgeois urbanism and the possibility of radical urban politics, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29, pp. 670–678.

29.

Friesen

(2001) The new Chinese community in New Zealand: local outcomes of transnationalism, Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 10, pp. 213–240.

30.

Larner

Craig

(2005) After neoliberalism? Community activism and local partnerships in Aotearoa New Zealand, Antipode, 37, pp. 402–424.

31.

Larner

Mollow

Goodrum

(2007) Globalization, cultural economy, and not-so-global cities: the New Zealand designer fashion industry, Environment and Planning D, 25, pp. 381–400.

32.

Laurier

Philo

(2006) Cold shoulders and napkins handed: gestures of responsibility, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 31, pp. 193–207.

33.

Le Heron

(2009) ‘Rooms and moments’ in neoliberalising policy trajectories of metropolitan Auckland, New Zealand: towards constituting progressive spaces through post-structural political economy, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 50, pp. 135–153.

34.

McCann

(2003) Framing space and time in the city: urban policy and the politics of spatial and temporal scale, Journal of Urban Affairs, 25, pp. 159–178.

35.

McCann

(2008) Expertise, truth, and urban policy mobilities: global circuits of knowledge in the development of Vancouver, Canada’s ‘four pillar’ drug strategy, Environment and Planning A, 40, pp. 885–904.

36.

McKinnon

(1996) Immigrants and citizens: New Zealanders and Asian immigration in historical context. Institute of Policy Studies, Victoria University, Wellington.

37.

Memon

Davies

T. G.

Fookes

(2007) Institutional arrangements for metropolitan government and strategic planning in Auckland, New Zealand Geographer, 63, pp. 43–54.

38.

Mitchell

(1993) Multiculturalism, or the united colours of capitalism?, Antipode, 25, pp. 263–294.

39.

Mitchell

(2004) Geographies of identity: multiculturalism unplugged, Progress in Human Geography, 28, pp. 641–651.

40.

Murphy

(2008) Third-wave gentrification in New Zealand: the case of Auckland, Urban Studies, 45, pp. 2521–2540.

41.

Murphy

Friesen

Kearns

R. A.

(2003) The divided city and urban sustainability: Auckland’s experience of ethnic segregation and social polarisation, in: Freeman

Thompson-Fawcett

(Eds) Living Space: Towards Sustainable Settlements in New Zealand, pp. 95–112. Dunedin: University of Otago Press.

42.

Parekh

(2000) Rethinking Multiculturalism. London: Macmillan.

43.

Parekh

Bhabha

(1989) ‘Identities on parade’, Marxism Today, June, pp. 24–29.

44.

Peck

(2005) Struggling with the creative class, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29, pp. 740–770.

45.

Peck

Theodore

Brenner

(2009) Neoliberal urbanism: models, moments, mutations,SAIS Review, 29, pp. 49–66.

46.

Purcell

(2003) Citizenship and the right to the global city: reimagining the capitalist world order, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27, pp. 564–590.

47.

Qadeer

M. A.

(1997) Pluralistic planning for multicultural cities: the Canadian practice, Journal of the American Planning Association, 63, pp. 481–494.

48.

Regional Sustainable Development Forum (2008) One plan for the Auckland region. Regional Sustainable Development Forum, Auckland.

49.

Sandercock

(2006) Cosmopolitan urbanism: a love song to our mongrel cities, in: Binnie

Holloway

Millington

Young

(Eds) Cosmopolitan Urbanism, pp. 37–52. London: Routledge.

50.

Sassen

(1991) The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

51.

Smith

(2002) New globalism, new urbanism: gentrification as global urban strategy, Antipode, 34, pp. 427–450.

52.

Swyngedouw

(2000) Authoritarian governance, power and the politics of rescaling, Environment and Planning D, 18, pp. 63–76.

53.

Swyngedouw

(2005) Governance innovation and the citizen: the Janus face of governance-beyond-the-state, Urban Studies, 42, pp. 1991–2006.

54.

Valentine

(2008) Living with difference: reflections on geographies of encounter, Progress in Human Geography, 32, pp. 323–337.

55.

Vertovec

(1996) Multiculturalism, culturalism, and public incorporation, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 19, pp. 49–69.

56.

Ward

(2006) ‘Policies in motion’, urban management and state restructuring: the trans-local expansion of business improvement districts, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 30, pp. 54–75.

57.

Wetzstein

(2008) Relaunching regional economic-development policy and planning for Auckland: remaking the state and contingent governance under neoliberalism, Environment and Planning C, 26, pp. 1093–1112.

58.

Wise

(2005) Hope and belonging in a multicultural suburb, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 26, pp. 171–186.

59.

Wood

Landry

(2007) The Intercultural City: Planning for Diversity Advantage. London: Earthscan Publications Ltd.

60.

Yeoh

B. S. A.

(2005) The global cultural city? Spatial imagineering and politics in the (multi)cultural marketplaces of south-east Asia, Urban Studies, 42, pp. 945–958.