{"id":4075,"date":"2014-03-29T14:20:17","date_gmt":"2014-03-29T20:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/edmonton\/?p=4075"},"modified":"2014-03-30T18:17:33","modified_gmt":"2014-03-31T00:17:33","slug":"towers-babel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/edmonton\/2014\/03\/29\/towers-babel\/","title":{"rendered":"Towers of Babel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nPax Ethnica: Where and How Diversity Succeeds
\n<\/strong>Author: Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac (Perseus Books 2012)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Can’t we all just get along? Well if we\u2019re crammed into concrete towers on the edge of town, the answer may be no\u2026 and it\u2019s the well-intentioned designs of architects and urban planners that are to blame. That\u2019s one of the more interesting conclusions of \u201cPax Ethnica: Where and How Diversity Succeeds<\/a>\u201d by co-authors (and husband and wife) Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac. When different languages, races, religions, castes and creeds jostle together in cities, how they get along (or don’t) is as much a question of built form and urban policy as anything else.<\/p>\n

At a time when inter-communal unrest makes regular headlines around the world, the authors spent two years\u00a0looking for the opposite: places where diversity worked. \u00a0Places where mixed ethno-cultural populations co-existed peacefully, and when necessary, dampened the sparks of confrontation rather than fanned the flames of intolerance. \u00a0They examine why Marseilles stayed relatively quiet while the banlieues <\/i>of Paris burned during the 2005 riots in France; why the state of Kerala avoided the ugly Hindu-Muslim bloodshed that Gujarat could not in India three years earlier.\u00a0 Through interviews with politicians, professors and community leaders as well as rappers, street merchants and students, the pair look at how multiethnic populations can recover from seemingly intractable political tensions: how centuries of Danish-German friction was resolved after World War Two in Flensburg, Germany and how Russia\u2019s Muslim Tatars eked out a quiet arrangement for sovereignty while other regions, such as Chechnya, chose much bloodier alternatives in the wake of the Soviet Union\u2019s dissolution (though developing events<\/a>\u00a0may challenge this conclusion). The book rounds out with a look at arguably the world\u2019s most diverse place, New York City’s borough of Queens and its 138 languages (while there is no mention of Toronto\u2019s self-proclaimed status as the world\u2019s most diverse city, Canada earns justifiable praise for some of its more progressive cultural preservation and integration policies, as well as for far-sighted theorists like Will Kymlicka<\/a> and Charles Taylor<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Chicago’s Cabrini-Green: America’s most infamous housing project. Photo by Mary C. Johns<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But back to the towers. How are they detrimental to multicultural and multiethnic polities? In the same ways they impede community generally. Concrete and steel highrises (typically defined as at least 12 stories but often much, much higher) can be found in virtually every major city in Canada and around the world. Cheap and quick to construct, they mushroomed in the post-war era to become the most commonly replicated structure on earth, as the National Film Board\u2019s groundbreaking 2009 documentary series Highrise<\/i><\/a> points out. A seemingly slick solution to the issue of overcrowding in cities, Le Corbusier- inspired tower blocks\u2014once thought to be the hubs of futuristic \u2018garden cities<\/a>\u2019– soon lost their seductive sheen and became characterized as massive and isolating structures, quick to age, energy inefficient and prone to vandalism & crime (before it was demolished in 2010, the massive Cabrini-Green housing project in Chicago was described as a “virtual war zone”). Whether post-Soviet cinder block, American “project” or Indian\u00a0chawl,<\/em>\u00a0these structures, particularly their common-area corridors and lobbies, dilapidated quickly without concerted care and maintenance.<\/p>\n

Thus, according to Meyer & Brysaac, \u201cIn constructing homes for new immigrants, horizontal<\/i> appears to be more successful than vertical<\/i>\u201d (emphasis theirs). Referencing the geographies and pathologies of the French riots, the authors note the alienating characteristics <\/b>of highrises wear the civic fabric bare and encourage ghettoization: \u201cFew modernist dogmas seem to us more problematic than the\u2026 enthusiasm for high-rise apartments to shelter (among others) immigrant families.\u201d<\/p>\n

They offer the example of low-rise brownstones in Queens as a healthy alternative, where smaller-scaled neighbourhoods, welcoming stoops and low-slung awnings encourage interaction and familiarity. That’s not to say that large scale public housing projects or existing highrise apartments can’t be made more liveable. \u00a0However, as in many other aspects of good public policy, to do so requires individuality, enlightenment and courage.<\/p>\n

\"9288276969_ed1578b846\"<\/a>
Human Centred Design: Edmonton’s Boyle Renaissance Welcome Village<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Granted, human-scale urban planning won\u2019t eliminate every ethnic conflict in the world (anti-highrises are but one of the book\u2019s eleven stated methods for reducing inter-communal tensions, alongside a healthy civil society, female empowerment, well-funded public libraries and an appreciation of rap music), but when an increasing number of studies point out that smarter planning and better architecture can make for a happier city, \u201cPax Ethnica\u201d is one of the few books to argue that the happiness of black and brown citizens counts too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pax Ethnica: Where and How Diversity Succeeds Author: Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac (Perseus Books 2012) Can’t we all just get along? Well if we\u2019re crammed into concrete towers on the edge of town, the answer may be no\u2026 and it\u2019s the well-intentioned designs of architects and urban planners that are to blame.Continue reading “Towers of Babel”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8212,"featured_media":4079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,7,16,20,23,29],"tags":[186,199,187,202,201,192,184,189,194,190,193,188,196,191,195,198,197,185,200],"class_list":["post-4075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-civic-engagement","category-community","category-culture","category-housing","category-neighbourhoods","category-politics","category-urban-design","tag-apartment","tag-charles-taylor","tag-condo","tag-culture-2","tag-ethnic","tag-france","tag-highrise","tag-immigration","tag-india","tag-integration","tag-kerala","tag-multiculturalism","tag-new-york-city","tag-paris","tag-queens","tag-russia","tag-tatar","tag-tower","tag-will-kymlicka"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTowers of Babel - 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