Abstract
Urban planners have started to discuss multiculturalism and immigration. For example, in Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities, Leonie Sandercock discusses how planning can support policies of multiculturalism. In The Construction of Equality: Syriac Immigration and the Swedish City, Jennifer Mack discusses cultural diversity, migration, transnationalism, and how equality has been constructed by society and policy. Many urban planners in Europe, including in Sweden, consider equality as the leading ideal and thus focus on mixing different income groups, encouraging cultural diversity, and addressing economic and social segregation. Södertälje, a city with about 70,000 inhabitants, located about eight miles southeast of Stockholm, is a good choice to discuss these aspects as it has been the home of many Syriac immigrants for decades.
Mack is a researcher at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University and in the Department of Architecture and the Built Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. In 2007 she started her intensive and systematic fieldwork, which includes extensive ethnographic research with a 14-month stay in Södertälje, resulting in more than 50 interviews. She also analyzed documents, media reports, and archival materials. In sum, Mack generated a rich and multi-perspective case study which she structured “to rethink [the] current understanding of segregation and how architecture and planning really happen in twenty first century Europe” (p. xii). Mack argues that the relationship between refugees and migrants, cities, and urban planners should be viewed in a new way: “Through urban design from below, Syriacs have questioned Swedish urban-planning philosophies that regard spatial segregation and social integration as opposites” (255).
In the 1960s, Syriac refugees fled from Turkey to refugee camps in Lebanon, while others went to Sweden to settle in many communities, including Södertälje. Here, they moved to select neighborhoods, characterized by social housing for eligible low-income households, funded by the national One Million Homes program that ran from 1965 to 1974. Over time, some people called Södertälje “Mesopotälje,” merging Södertälje and Mesopotonia, the ancient place name of origin, before the Roman Empire, in one word. In 2007, the Syriac population peaked at 26% in Södertälje.
Mack focuses across six chapters on Syriac immigrants to Södertälje. Chapter 1 (Standards and Separatism: The Swedish Million Program, Syriac Enclaves, and Equality”) discusses the One Million Homes program, which she sees as an outcome of a planning policy for equality, intrinsically based on an idea of cultural uniformity where the cultural differences of inhabitants are considered to be important. While the Swedish approach to cultural diversity was not pursued through assimilation, unlike other European countries such as Germany, the Syriac community was allowed to keep their cultural differences. This approach has helped many Syriacs to deal with unemployment and the public sector retrenching from investing in public housing and social infrastructure.
Chapter 2 (“Visible Cities, Invisible Citizens: Service and Citizenship in the Centrum”) discusses the decline of Södertälje, triggered by economic challenges and then the decline in public support in the 1970s. Thus, middle-income residents left Södertälje, leading to increased poverty. However, the Syriac community took advantage of community facilities, public spaces, and housing estates. Also, the modernist and functional architecture for which Södertälje is an emblematic case allowed the Syriac community to redefine their neighborhoods, applying bottom-up strategies of remodeling and refitting.
In chapter 3 (“Making Mesopotälje: Sacred and Profane ‘Diaspora Space’ in the City”), Mack discusses the process of appropriation of Södertälje by the Syriac community in the 1980s, developing a mindset that supported the active transformation of space according to their ideas. Now having space for self-presentation Syriacs became proactively a “diaspora community,” not only by connecting worldwide but also by creating an image of themselves that includes features of Södertälje in its physical and visual appearance. For example, Mack vividly reports about the world championship of Syriac football and other activities that required a spatial organization leading to building monumental architecture for their purpose. Mack argues that a new order of spaces appeared, overlaying the functional geography of Södertälje with both sacred and profane places.
Chapter 4 (“‘Södertälje is a Theater’: The Performance of Propriety and Ritual Infrastructure”) provides details of the reconfiguration of the physical and mental space in Södertälje by giving insights on the temporary use of vacant private and public spaces. Here, the author utilizes her rich empirical fieldwork by taking the reader to ceremonies and rituals, such as funerals and marriages. These social forms of organization indicate how the Syriac community links religion, family, and community to space. In their everyday lives, many Syriacs redefine spaces as stages for roleplaying games typical of their cultural traditions, which are needed to visibly shape their community. By pronouncing the effect of these acts of staging, the author points to the effect on the individual decision to continue living in Södertälje despite its challenging segregation. In the 1990s, Swedish policymakers paid less attention to equality and more attention to individualism and homeownership. Some Syriacs followed this trend, becoming homeowners and building new homes with Syriac designs.
In chapters 5 (“Greetings from Hollywood! Enclaves and Participation ‘from the Ghetto to the Mansion’”) and 6 (“Safety in Numbers: Tolerance and Norms in Syriac Design”) the author discusses the intersection between Swedish standards such as interior design building codes and ideas of a more individualized style of living in the Syriac community. These two chapters discuss insights of Swedish architects about imported materials and unconventional designs. By looking not only at the planning policy but also at the practices of architects, the author overcomes simplifications of bottom-up versus top-down concepts of urban planning, as sometimes appear in reflections on this topic. Her main goal is to show how different understandings of architecture and urban design infiltrate into both the migratory community and the professional world of planning. Over time, Swedish perspectives on the political meaning of space have changed from the socio-democratic concept of equality of the 1970s to a more liberal approach in the 1990s. These changes have only partly influenced the way that Sweden in general has altered its concepts of urban planning and architecture due to the views and needs of the Syriac community.
In summary, this book presents a strong argument for reconsidering social housing as a tool for equality and diversity. It provides a thoughtful discussion of the Swedish history of urban planning and its concept of social housing. While mainstream debates in housing and architecture mostly regard the 1960s and the 1970s as a complete failure, the case of Södertälje allows a more balanced discussion of these two decades. Mack argues that the Swedish example calls for a profound reconsideration, given the fact that many developments in other countries such as the United States and France have been torn down. Urban planners, she argues, need to think of alternatives beyond the dominance of property and suburban housing concepts and need to overcome the stigmatizing view of the modernist approach.
Overall, this book may be of interest to those interested in how the European social housing areas—mostly stigmatized—have been able to integrate culturally diverse groups by giving them space for design from bottom-up strategies. The book is well written and easy to follow and has carefully integrated illustrations. While Södertälje and the Swedish context offer an excellent case study, some may wonder nevertheless whether the experience of Syriac immigrants is representative of other refugees in Sweden and in Europe. Future studies similar to The Construction of Equality should therefore focus on other refugee groups in Sweden, Europe, or other parts of the world.