Rescaling the migrant gateway: Race, restructuring and redevelopment in the inner city

Abstract

We need to approach ethnically diverse urban spaces through the adoption of multiple scales of analysis, with a view to drawing out the nuances and spatial subjectivities of that process. This paper advances that agenda through a spatially forensic approach to consider how different forms of redevelopment impacted on racially diverse spaces in a context of dramatic material, economic and social change. It uses the city of Manchester, England, in the late-1960s and early ‘70s as a lens through which to analyze and comprehend some of the complexities of such neighborhoods. This article synthesizes archival and GIS techniques to analyze three significant and alternate planning interventions in three different areas. Whilst differing in nature as cultural, commercial and housing developments respectively, all shared wider common social objectives in being imagined as sites for improved living conditions and enhanced community cohesion and integration. Responses to redevelopment were as diverse as those communities, ranging from activism and resistance through to resignation, welcome and withdrawal. The broader ascendancy of free-market influence in post-war public planning represented less of an ideological epiphany than a seemingly unavoidable reality in the face of wider macroeconomic and demographic decline. Show more