Report: Beyond the Ghetto

Links:

ucl.ac.uk/grand-challenges/" target="_self">UCL Grand Challenges

A report by Dr Laura Vaughan (UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies), Beyond the Ghetto - An interdisciplinary perspective on patterns of ethnicity in the built environment, has been published to mark UCL Migration Week.

In May 2010 the UCL Grand Challenges of Sustainable Cities and Intercultural Interaction convened a gathering of 30 academics, policymakers and NGO representatives, who came together to discuss the subject of urban segregation.

The workshop discussed the recent preoccupation with the geographic concentration of minority groups, finding that it stems from a deeply rooted assumption that sees spatial separation as a clear symptom of lack of social integration. The recently completed Beyond the Ghetto workshop report concludes that since segregation is an inherently socio-spatial phenomenon, analysis of it needs to take account of the physical, social and policy context, particularly as ethnic segregation is frequently bound up in social inequality. This report coincides with extensive public debate about the supposed end of multiculturalism. It demonstrates that it is essential that future policy decisions must be made on the basis of empirical analysis to allow policy makers to get to grips with the inherent complexity of the topic of urban segregation.

To find out more, use the links at the top of this article.

Image: Charles Booth map of poverty in 1889, showing a section of the East End, with its wide variation of poverty and prosperity. Courtesy Sabiha Ahmad