Metropolis

Urban Politics of Multiculturalism: Recognizing Ethno[space-flow-city] SEMINAR

Armando Montilla

 

Migration is a changing factor over contemporary urban landscape, where mobility extrapolates in new territories determined by ethnicity and the banal hosts intangible connections beyond geographies as they have been traditionally understood, leading to a city shaped by Multiculturalism: “This extreme congruence puts us to the test, it is not solely, as we might claim, a temporary event, but a cultural and political advent that poses to us, outside the ecological question of limits, the no less important dromological question of residual proximities” (2)

Cities are in constant state of flux, and not only socio-economical factors determining the dynamics of their space are impacted by the flow in transnational migration they are target destination to; but also altering demographics by the flux of immigration are changing the visual identity of the city: Visual communication through signage, the appearance of ethnic-oriented commerce and business activities are the most evident traces of what we will call Ethnospace (3), a space of transnational dynamic and fluid occupancy; with the capacity of changing the urban landscape in short spans of time. The occupation and appropriation of urban residual sub-spaces, and the over-density created by time-shared spaces of dwelling and over-crowed housing are the concealed characteristic of the Ethnospace, the Ethnoflow and the Ethnocity.

During the course of the Seminar, the definition and evidences of the above-mentioned concepts will be discussed, demonstrated and explored in the context of the City/Cities. Empirical work, photographic essays and explorations in contemporary film will serve as the initial vehicle of exploration of this contemporary urban phenomenon.

“What causes the origins of City Form? Is there a particular process, which occurs early since the beginning of their formation, when cities incorporate a certain ‘code of growth’, depicting specific characteristics, which – similar to a what a particular genome does within biological ADN genetic sequences – remains as part of the urban fabric growth patterns, throughout extended periods of time? Can certain populations affect this code, either following it or enhancing it? Can a city be destined to grow unavoidably following a certain pattern, then be impacted be specific modes of living, eventually creating a new type of hybrid, city form?…[…]…The question of city growth is nowadays a challenge to the sustainability of the planet, in the sense of their occupation of the land and the consumption of energy and production of waste cities represent. In the other hand, social and cultural tensions represent a omnipresent contemporary urban condition, given as direct consequences of international migration and mobility into major urban centres, and regarding the adaptation local and new migrant urban populations must suffer, both to one other, and to the new environment, the one encountered by arriving migrants and the one being created by the transformations occurring from such pattern of mobility” (4)

(2) VIRILIO, Paul: Negative Horizon (Translated by Michael Degener) London/New York: Continuum 2005 (Original in French: VIRILIO, Paul: L’Horizon negatif. Paris: Galilée, 2005) P. 77
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(3) The concept of Ethnospace has been announced as part of an in-progress PhD dissertation: “‘Fractal City’ or New Babylon? Urban geographies of multiculturalism and the 'Ethnospace' cross-line between Miami and Barcelona ”, at the Departament de Geografia, Facultat de Filosofia i Lletres of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
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(4) MONTILLA, Armando: "'Unrooting' The American Dream: Exiling the Ethnospace in the Urban Fractality of the city" in 'Sustainable Cities 2010' Conference Proceedings Journal. Southampton: Wessex Institute of Technology (forthcoming) April 2010