Metropolis

Ethno[space]: Duality and Conflict in the Multicultural City SEMINAR

Armando Montilla

The Contemporary City is a nowadays more and more epitomized by the condition of multiculturalism. Historically, migration and mobility have allowed for cities to become the field of ethnic harmony or tension, while migrant communities impact the urban and architectural space of the city as a whole. In most cases, imported models of living and working in the space of the city are incorporated into the urban kaleidoscope, and the so-called ‘ethnic enclave’ plays an important role into the appeal of the urban realm, whether to enhance the tourist gaze or to contribute to a the architectural and urban variety of the metropolis.

The fields of Sociology and Cultural Studies have traditionally advocated for the poly-ethnic, multicultural city as a viable and unavoidable model, representative of the degree of openness, and tolerance in society, which doubles as a barometer of the level of development of an entire country. How do migrant communities impact the space of the city? How does the ethnic and multicultural component of urban multinational immigration affect the dynamics of urban private and public space? Is the multicultural model a more sustainable model of development, from the social and physical points of view? Can architecture distinguish the different levels of complexity of the multicultural space of urbanity? What are the levels of tolerance architectural space mediates in the midst of multicultural grounds? In a growing era of fear and environmental concerns, the issue of the urban space of ethnicity becomes an important element to consider, when it comes to the analysis of the contemporary city and its ability to achieve a sustainable development.

The Seminar will attempt to answer these questions, in an effort to acknowledge the reflections of the discipline of architecture and urban theory in parallel to the development of the human race, gradually and progressively more and more ethnically mixed, and the impact it has in the space of the metropolis (1)

"The most recent and current financial crisis has created tremendous upheaval in the midst of migrant communities in Miami, and the Mortgage crunch has propelled Miami-Dade County to be the third most-affected city in foreclosures rates in the nation. Throughout the years of more available housing purchase credit, the typical arrangement for families of immigrant extraction (i.e. Cuban, Nicaraguan, Colombian); was to acquire property massively in series, sometimes on the same street, or very nearby each other, within a particular city/neighborhood. In this sense the family spatial structure was maintained due to the proximity of the dwellings, allowing for a sense of community and/or family ethnic enclave. The consequences of the foreclosing crisis has been the re-appropriation on the part of the Banks of selected properties from the individual ownerships composing the family housing structure, as they go unpaid in their mortgages, due to the increasing unemployment and/or the business economical decline. Progressively and as the houses/properties are lost to the Bank expropriation one by one, the family moves around onto the next houses/properties still being saved from foreclosure, and progressively the family structure gets reduced to one house/dwelling (as the last resource of keeping an active roof over), while the density at one dwelling and overcrowding increases (2)

In this sense, the suburb communities become authentic ‘ghost towns’ with entire streets devoid of inhabitants, while only one or two houses become the hosting spaces of the entire former family spatial structure in the neighborhood. It is in this particular case, that the ‘American Dream’ of numerous migrants arriving in Miami into the center of a hosting familiar structure, and in search of a better life prospect; has been ‘unrooted’, from their original hosting spatial structure, which was allowed and nurtured in the past by the easier access to property and cheap mortgage credit " (3)

 

(1) 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 Miami as 'Ethnocity', at the Departament of Urban Geography, Facultat de Filosofia i Lletres of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB)
(2) "City's affordable housing in crisis": In "House of Lies: Miami Crisis" The Miami Herald, June 3, 2009
(3) "‘Unrooting’ the American Dream: Exiling the Ethnospace in the urban fractality of Miami " in 99th ACSA Annual Meeting: Where do you stand? Conference Proceedings. Washington DC: Associate of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, 2011