Equally Spaced?

Public space and interaction

between diverse communities

A Report for the Commission for

Racial Equality

Hannah Lownsbrough
Joost Beunderman

July 2007
The authors of the report would like to thank the Commission for
Racial Equality for their support for the realisation of this report. In
particular, we would like to thank Nick Johnson, Jonathan Bamber and
Fred Grindrod at the CRE for their input and guidance throughout the
process. At Demos, we would like to thank Catherine Fieschi,
Alessandra Buonfino, Sophia Parker and Peter Harrington for their
insightful comments on the drafts. Special thanks to Nasser
Abourahme, Poppy Nicol, Outi Kuittinen and Abdus Shuman for their
research support and Alyson Krueger for her work on the launch. As
ever, all errors remain our own.

A note on methodology:
In-depth fieldwork was undertaken for three of the case studies: in the
Castlemilk Youth Complex in Glasgow, in Queen’s Market in Newham,
and in Bath Place Community Centre, Leamington Spa. For these three
cases, researchers spent time in each location observing in detail the
functioning of the site and its users, as well as talking to a range of
actors: facility managers, market traders, youth workers, board
members, as well as users. We are grateful for the cooperation and
enthusiasm with which we were met in each of these places.

Page 1
Foreword

A journey on the London Underground in rush hour is probably the most

diverse experience anyone could have.
The sheer number of different ethnicities and faiths let alone the
diversity of socio-economic groups, means that any carriage represents in
some respect, a most diverse part of Britain. It is unique to see groups of
all backgrounds standing next to one another. Yet when it comes to
actual interaction or economic and social integration the reality is very
different. Contact with strangers on the Underground – or in similar
situations – is minimal. It is actively avoided or, at most, happens in a
purely functional manner; almost certainly, it is fleeting and hardly ever
becomes more than a smile, or a polite word exchanged in passing.
Everyone is on their own, with their iPods and their noses in a book or
newspaper. Just as it is diverse, it is also almost entirely isolated.
This kind of everyday contact is dictated and forced by functionality –
dialogue is not meant to happen. And when we look for places where
people can actually come together, we must look for more meaningful
interactions rather than simply those arenas where the greatest number
of people may cross one another’s path.
In recent years, many of our communities have been under threat of
division and fracture. The often very rapid and unexplained pace of
change across our society has unsettled many and caused many people to
retreat into more insular community ties. Bonds of solidarity have largely
fragmented and as a result of lack of contact and trust, tensions and
misunderstandings between people have increased. This tension often
manifests itself through a fear of other groups; Britain’s diversity, which
should be a source of strength, has become instead the subject of
division. We live in a society where different groups live side by side,
often occupy the same space, the same schools and shop in the same high
streets. Yet a sudden event, a rumour or a general perception of injustice
can be enough to trigger division and spark conflict. In some cases, such
simmering tensions can disappear over time. In others, however, tensions
come out in the open, first between individuals and then spreading to the
wider neighbourhood. Much more often, however, tensions don’t explode
but instead are responsible for a silent retreat – a gradual withdrawal and
clustering of homogenous communities behind invisible barriers - echoed
by Ted Cantle’s description of ‘parallel lives’.1
In order to move beyond such tensions, and to counter the threat of a
steady impoverishing of the shared public realm, it is fundamental to look
ahead and return to a vision of what an integrated society might look
like. By integration we do not just refer to the way a more ethnically and
culturally diverse Britain can occupy the same space but rather take into
account the wider process whereby groups of people from different
economic and social backgrounds can learn to live together. An integrated

1
Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team, chaired by Ted Cantle
(Home Office, 2001).

Page 2
society is a society in which people’s chances and opportunities to access
services or acquiring a job or educational qualifications are not
influenced or limited by an individual’s faith, race or cultural background
but rather are fully dictated by merit and aspirations.
And it is not only about achievement and life chances. It is also about
relationships: friendships that cross ethnic boundaries and inspired by
what we have in common rather than by what divides us. The fairest
societies are those in which people share experiences and common
ambitions whatever their racial, religious or cultural backgrounds. In
essence, we need to reassert the need for a society based on solidarity in
which everyone’s life chances are unaffected by what or where they were
born.
To achieve this vision of living together, we need to accomplish equality
for all sections of the community, interaction between all sections of
society and participation by all sections of the community. This also relies
on encouraging civic engagement and a richer notion of what it means to
be a British citizen, by emphasising responsibilities, rights and solidarity,
and through the promotion of greater interaction within and between
communities.
There have been a series of parallel debates that impact upon the
importance of public spaces. In this country, we have heard much talk,
even if this has not always been followed by effective action, about the
rebirth of our local institutions – currently framed as the debate over
localism and ‘double devolution’. What is true is that there has been
renewed emphasis on the creation of a public realm, alongside renewed
emphasis on the recreation of a civic identity that encourages citizens to
take pride in their own areas. At the same time, the US academic Robert
Putnam has been started the debate on how to track and rebuild
declining levels of social capital amongst communities. In his seminal
‘Bowling Alone’ and subsequent work, he outlines the strong role that
shared spaces can play in re-building strong community ties and networks
of social support and reciprocity.2
All of this brings us back to the crucial role that public spaces can play in
providing a focus for practical solutions that increase our sense of society
and mutuality. What we mean by public space can be wide and varied – as
one part of this research shows, it does not even need to refer to physical
space. The important thing is what happens in that space. Whatever
background, faith or any other views any individual has when they choose
to enter, they can participate with their fellow citizens. It is about
coming together and, more specifically, doing things together.
The research contained in this report shows some pioneering and
innovative examples of how public spaces have been used to bring people

2
Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 2000); Robert Putnam (ed) Democracies in Flux: The Evolution
of Social Capital in Contemporary Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Robert
Putnam and Lewis Feldstein, Better Together: Restoring the American Community (New
York: Simon & Schuster 2003).

Page 3
together. Hopefully, these are just the tip of the iceberg and there is
much more work going on across the country. It can be practical, focused
around a common political project or neighbourhood scheme; it could be
done through campaigning around a cause or, as in many cases, through
sporting or cultural activity. Previous CRE research shows that the best
inter-ethnic interactions come when integration is a by-product of people
coming together for another purpose.3
That means that a crucial way of developing an integrated society is to
invest in and promote a far greater range of shared public spaces. This
report begins to show how this can be done.
Our vision should be the creation of a twenty first century polis – but one
that takes the reality of contemporary life as a starting point. It may not
be confined to a single geographic area and certainly should be more
inclusive than the ancient Greek description. However, the idea of a
common belonging to a citizenship that can embrace diversity but still
engender solidarity is crucial to twenty-first century Britain. Public spaces
can be an essential building block for bringing people together and
generating shared experiences. These, in turn, can lead to a greater
sense of belonging. We need to learn from the examples in this report
and make building public spaces a key part of our policy development in
the years to come.

Nick Johnson
Director of Policy and Public Sector, CRE

3
SHM, Promoting interaction between ethnic communities: a research project for the
Commission for Racial Equality (London: CRE, 2006).

Page 4
Equally Spaced?
Public space and interaction between diverse communities

This report aims to address the deficit in the current arena by offering
one analysis of how public spaces can contribute to building positive
relationships and bridges between different communities. Drawing on
expertise from the fields of regeneration, community activism and
education, the report works with a broad conception of public space that
will elicit a response from beyond the usual confines of the planning and
design sector.

The report explores people’s motivations for entering public spaces, and
assesses the potential for interaction that can be found herein. In
particular, it explores some of the specific dimensions of public space -
those that are most salient for people working in communities affected by
tensions and misunderstandings. The report ends with a series of practical
recommendations for those working in the field, drawn from the case
studies and from an analysis of existing literature.

Page 5
Introduction

Small communities grow great through harmony, great ones fall

to pieces through discord.
Sallust, 86 BC – 34 BC

Here we are, about to build one million homes in the South East
without a clue as to what creates a mixed community. High-
density housing is increasing and there is evidence of increased
segregation and different groups becoming more exclusive.
Trevor Phillips, Commission for Racial Equality4

The struggle to live alongside our neighbours is hardly a new one. But, as
the quotation suggests, it remains critically important that communities
aspiring to success and stability ensure that the relationships between
people living within their confines are based upon principles of respect
and fairness, preventing the building pressure of resentment from
bubbling over into full-blown violence or civil unrest.
In today’s world, we live increasingly globalised lives based in multiple
overlapping networks of economic, social and cultural affiliation. Even so,
the quality of the everyday locality still matters. Research evidence
shows a link between good community spirit and health outcomes and
between tightly knit communities and positive quality of lives.5 However,
in a time of change and increased mobility, the search for spaces of
comfort in relatively homogeneous micro-communities is becoming
increasingly popular. The US model of gated communities is spreading in
the UK and for many people (and in particularly amongst the higher social
classes) choosing neighbours is becoming as important as choosing a place
to live.6
This predictable human response to uncertainty can draw communities
into a trap: whilst new or persistent pressures in a locality may lead to
shared responses and innovation, and hence to increased social capital,
they can also lead to a retreat from the shared realms of the community.
This in turn can result in increased anxiety and tension between groups,
thereby lowering collective efficacy: the ability of the neighbourhood to
collectively respond to change in a positive way is threatened, which is

4
‘High-density race warning – Trevor Phillips says designers must consider community
cohesion when planning new developments’ Building Design, 03 November 2006.
5
Alessandra Buonfino and Paul Hilder, Neighbouring in contemporary Britain: A think-piece
for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Housing and Neighbourhoods Committee (York/
London: JRF/ Young Foundation, 2006).
6
R Atkinson and J Flint, Fortress UK? Gated Communities, The Spatial Revolt of the Elites
and Time-Space Trajectories of Segregation (CNR Paper 17: July 2004); however there is
no agreement over the question whether ‘ghettoisation’ is actually taking place in Britain.
See Ash Amin, Thinking Past Integration and Community Cohesion. Paper for presentation
at 2007 COMPAS Annual Conference, Oxford University, 5-6 July 2007.

Page 6
likely to make any individual or group within the neighbourhood even
more vulnerable.7
But we continue to have high expectations of our neighbours and our
locality. Data suggest for example that trust levels are still relatively
high, with 47 per cent of people trusting many people in their
neighbourhood and another 37 per cent trusting some people.8
Conversely, crimes committed by a perpetrator known to a local
community – the shootings in Dunblane, for example, or the murders in
Soham – seem to be far more shocking to onlookers than those carried out
by an outsider.
The power of neighbourhoods and local solidarity is also a force to be
reckoned with – a fact long recognised, although not always welcomed, by
community organisers and politicians alike. Public spaces have been key
battlegrounds for issues around race and social justice, both in the UK
and elsewhere. Many of the most effective oppressive techniques by the
racist apartheid regime in South Africa relied on sealing the diverse
groups within cities off from one another, further entrenching the
existing alienation and so strengthening their own regime. The
mismanagement of public policing in the predominantly African-Caribbean
community in Brixton was blamed for the riots that sparked off there in
9
the 1980s. The Government’s decision to ban spontaneous protests in
Parliament Square hints at the power that public demonstrations can have
in shaping public – if not political – opinion. Public space, in other words,
is a space for encounters and contest – providing at times an arena for
symbolic and ideological conflict, and at times a symbolic beacon of hope
or potential.

A story of decline, and stories of revival

This symbolism has been particularly important as the recent decades
have seen a general perception of a decline of public space. Experts
describe this as a ‘discourse of loss’, a theme that has run through urban
theory from the second half of the 20th century. As Stephen Johnson
explains, ‘there are few ideas more widely received these days than the
premise that traditional urban environments – the kind with bustling
footpaths, public squares distinctive local flavour, elaborate street
culture, and a diverse intermingling of people – have become an
endangered species.’10
Recognising the symbolic and social value of public space and the
pressures it has faced, policy-makers have recently responded by
attempts to reverse the degradation of the public realm. One key
element of such policies is re-investing in good quality public spaces. In

7
Robert J Sampson, Stephen Raudenbush, and Felton Earls, ‘Neighborhoods and Violent
Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy’ Science 1997-277:918-24.
8
Home Office Citizenship Survey (HMSO: London 2003).
9
Lord Scarman, The Scarman Report: The Brixton Disorders (HMSO: London, 1981).
10
Steven Johnson, ‘Theme-Parking the American City (Welcome to the Pleasure Dome)’
Village Voice Literary Supplement, February-March 1999), February 16, 1999, p 81.

Page 7
the UK, the Urban Task Force report Towards an Urban Renaissance11 was
the first of a series of policy publications to advocate a return to viewing
squares, parks and public buildings as the hallmark of our cities.

Another way of viewing public space focuses more on public space as the
setting for everyday spatial behaviour of individuals and communities,
emphasising ordinary activities of citizens. Stemming from a long
tradition in urban theory, this strand of thinking has become particularly
relevant for new approaches to public space.12 Crucially, this approach
emphasises human creativity and persistence in using and improving the
most unlikely of spaces for their own everyday ends, and questions the
prerogative of architects and planners to shape the public realm. Authors
point at the community garage sales that happen even in the most car-
dominated suburbs, the temporary appropriation of vacant land for
barbeques and other social activities, and the subaltern practices of
street vendors and political protest in public.

Living together or parallel lives?

The present-day policy discourse on public space has been accused of
ignoring such bottom-up practices, and thereby failing to live up fully to
its ambition to reinvigorate the shared public sphere.13 Equally, there
seems to be a degree of ethnicity-blindness in the assumption that a well-
designed public realm will benefit everyone equally.14 The promise of a
reinvigorated public realm seems to be the promise of re-engagement
between all groups, with benefits that extend from everyday sociability
to increased engagement, participation in society and community
cohesion. But these hopes stand in stark contrast to the reality of mutual
avoidance and community conflict as played out in the public sphere of
Britain’s neighbourhoods. The debate around how to live together in an
increasingly diverse Britain, rather than just next door to one another,
was highlighted by the 2001 riots and, more recently, by the Lozells riots
in Birmingham.
The impact that international events in the US and the Middle East, as
well as domestic debates have on community tensions at the local level is
considerable, especially in very diverse areas. Since the 9/11 bombings,

11
Towards an Urban Renaissance – The Report of the Urban Task Force, Chaired by Lord
Rogers of Riverside (DETR 1999).
12
Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of Califonia Press
1984); John Chase, John Kaliski and Margaret Crawford, Everyday Urbanism (Monacelli
1999); Melissa Mean and Charlie Tims, People Make Places (London: Demos/JRF, 2005);
Markus Miessen and Kenny Cuypers, Spaces of Uncertainty (Wuppertal: Müller und
Busmann 2002).
13
Ash Amin, Doreen Massey and Nigel Thrift, Cities for the Many, not the Few (Policy Press
2001); Gerry Hassan, Melissa Mean and Charlie Tims, The Dreaming City – Glasgow 2020
and the Power of Mass Imagination (London: Demos 2007).
14
Claire Rishbeth, ‘Ethnic Minority Groups and the Design on Public Open Space: an
Inclusive Landscape?’ Landscape Research 26-4, 2001.

Page 8
many Muslims believe that Islamophobia is on the rise in Europe,15 and in
the wake of the London Underground bombings of July 2005, the
European Monitoring Centre on Racism (EUMC) reported a steep, if short-
lived rise in faith hate crimes.16 At the same time, politics saw the start
of the long-running debate around what British values should really be
about, putting the question of belonging for many white and ethnic
minority Britons in the spotlight.17 The Cantle report, commissioned in
the wake of the riots in the north-west, had uncovered a picture of deep
division in the places visited by the review team:

…the Team was particularly struck by the depth of

polarisation of our towns and cities. The extent to which
these physical divisions were compounded by so many other
aspects of our daily lives, was very evident. Separate
educational arrangements, community and voluntary bodies,
employment, places of worship, language, social and cultural
networks, means that many communities operate on the basis
of a series of parallel lives. These lives often do not seem to
touch at any point, let alone overlap and promote any
meaningful interchanges.18

The reasons behind this sort of breakdown in community relations are

complex, with many underlying causes. Poverty and social exclusion play
a role and local competition over resources and services can be at the
heart of what appear to be ethnic conflicts.19 In response, policy has
often favoured an integrated approach to neighbourhood regeneration,
which seeks to break through the interconnected dynamics of deprivation.
Since this reading of the situation gained currency, however, it has
become clear that concentrating on neighbourhoods can bring both good
and bad outcomes for cohesion in the UK. Although from a Westminster
vantage point the barriers between people within neighbourhoods might
seem the easiest ones to break down, for residents they often feel
insurmountable in their daily lives. At the same time, the debate that has
raged within and beyond Westminster about multiculturalism has rarely
made the transition from punditry to practice. In the communities where
these issues may be most pressing, national attention from the media and

15
‘Fearful Europe feels post-9/11 chill’, BBC News, 11 September 2006,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5336596.stm (accessed 20 July 2007).
16
EUMC, The impact of 7 July 2005 London bomb attacks on Muslim communities in the EU
(Brussels: European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, 2005).
17
Kenan Malik ‘The Real value of Diversity’, Catalyst 23 April 2007,
http://www.cre.gov.uk/connections.html (accessed 20 July 2007); ‘Brown speech promotes
Britishness’, BBC News, 14 January 2006,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4611682.stm (accessed 20 July 2007).
18
Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team, chaired by Ted Cantle
(Home Office, 2001).
19
Stephen Vertovec, New complexities of cohesion in Britain: Super-diversity,
transnationalism and civil-integration (Oxford: ESRC Centre on Migration, Policy and
Society, 2007).

Page 9
politicians has offered little insight into the way policy should start
addressing divisions and build communities out of distinct groups.

What role does public space play?

It remains unclear what the role of public space can be in tackling these
dilemmas. The newly built squares and gardens of the ‘Urban
Renaissance’ agenda have met with scepticism. Ken Worpole and
Katharine Knox, for example, question their emphasis on design and on a
selective notion of urbanity: ‘The “urban renaissance” agenda appears
too concerned with matters of urban design, as well as being distinctly
metropolitan in character. The majority of public spaces that people use
are local spaces they visit regularly, often quite banal in design, or untidy
in their activities or functions (such as street markets and car boot sales),
but which nevertheless retain important social functions.’20 Stephen
Vertovec goes one step further, focusing in particular on the assumption
of increased interaction between different ethnic groups: ‘Desirable as
they might be towards promoting better relations, “sustained
encounters” and “deep and meaningful interactions” are simply not going
to occur among most people in British cities today, whether ethnic
majority, minority or new immigrant. Apart from a few contexts such as
21
work or school, most urban encounters are fleeting or momentary.’
However, while spaces for encounter have become more difficult to find
and have reinforced the phenomenon of ‘the familiar stranger’ for many
people in Britain today, public space is still considered far from
irrelevant.22 As Britain enters a period of ‘super-diversity’,23 in smaller
towns as well as in its cities, and as community cohesion and public
behaviour remain high on the policy agenda, there is increasing need for a
more thorough analysis of the potential for different types of public space
to support positive interactions between different social, economic and
ethnic groups. This is particularly important in the context of the current
drive to further increase the housing output across the country, as
emphasised by the new Government. It is crucial that this new
development – and indeed the ongoing regeneration of towns and cities –
will not just increase numbers but also create places where people feel
they can confidently live together with strangers. But as Trevor Phillips’
quote at the beginning of this introduction remarks, it is uncertain if we
know how, and indeed where, to start.

20
Ken Worpole and Katharine Knox, The Social Value of Public Spaces, (York: JRF, 2007)
p 3.
21
S. Vertovec, New complexities of cohesion in Britain: Super-diversity, transnationalism
and civil-integration, pp 3-5.
22
E.g. see Commission on Integration and Cohesion, Our shared future, DCLG 2007; Ash
Amin Thinking Past Integration and Community Cohesion. Paper for presentation at 2007
COMPAS Annual Conference, Oxford University, 5-6 July 2007.
23
Ibid.

Page 10
Chapter 1: What is public space?

In their report on public spaces and well-being, Dines and Cattell describe
public spaces as ‘a fundamental feature of cities. They represent sites of
sociability and face-to-face interaction, and at the same time their
quality is commonly perceived to be a measure of the quality of urban
life.’24 They also are often assumed to be civic spaces, both indoor and
out: town squares and town halls, parks and gardens and so on.
Giambattista Nolli's famous 1748 map of Rome showed a figure ground
where buildings - private space - were depicted in solid black and streets
and squares left unfilled. He drew civic buildings differently, however,
with their walls and columns in black, but their internal space left open
because these were places where the community met, socialised and
shared experiences, making the buildings a part of the public realm. Civic
institutions can be key elements of the public spaces in our cities.

Source http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/maps/nolli_06.jpg

This definition of public space essentially focuses upon its low barriers to
entry: public spaces should be cost free, with no requirements of users
and certainly no exclusion on the grounds of gender, race and so on.
Different authors place different emphasis on the power of the public
realm to shape society. Some see the public realm’s relevance primarily
in its functioning as the site for the conduction of politics.25 Others see its

24
See N Dines and V Cattel, with W Gesler and S Curtis, Public spaces, social relations and
well-being in East London (Bristol: Policy Press, 2006).
25
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1958);
Jürgen Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1991); Jeff Weintraub and
Krishan Kumar (eds), Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand
Dichotomy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

Page 11
value rather in the everyday sociability that takes place, in which we can
learn to live with others through seeing different norms and ways of
behaving.26
In contemporary cities, public spaces manifest the ‘throwntogetherness’
that characterises plural and open societies.27 The physical closeness does
not have to imply dense contact. As the American author Jane Jacobs
puts it: ‘Cities are full of people with whom, from your viewpoint, or
mine, or any other individual’s, a certain degree of contact is useful or
enjoyable; but you do not want them in your hair.’28 A desire for a degree
of distance and privacy is natural. The challenge, she suggested, is to find
ways in which this anonymity can be complemented by social mechanisms
that allow people to get on in daily life, and sometimes take
responsibility for each other.
But it is difficult to achieve. Richard Sennett, the sociologist, recently
wrote more pessimistically about the reality of interaction between
groups of ‘others’.29 Whereas for him the public realm should be the
place where strangers can meet in safety, he discerns three dominant
modes in which different groups live together, each of which is deficient:
conflict, assimilation and indifference. Drawing on historical examples,
he concludes that present day cities are sliding towards the indifference
as a way to cope with the presence of ‘others’ in our midst.

Conflict, assimilation, indifference

In Renaissance Venice, attitudes to Jews were so hostile that the city
government confined the Jews to a segregated island in the city – the first
ghetto – ‘protecting’ them with force against the frequent fury of their
fellow Venetians, whether religiously or racially motivated. According to
Sennett, ‘The reason for this arrangement was that Venice lacked civility
of the fundamental sort… Prejudices against them were so strong that
they could survive only in isolation with protection from the state… a
model of urban difference without civility, requiring the state to perform
the office of peacekeeping which civil society could not.’30
Overt conflict was no longer an issue in Berlin at the end of the
eighteenth century, where Jews enjoyed considerable freedom and
opportunity. But this harmony came at the price of having to leave their
differences at the door when entering the public realm: ‘This model of
civility exchanged inclusion for identity. The exchange… supposed that
civil society and more largely citizenship required its own unitary
identity; you could not be different and still be connected to others.’31

26
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House
and Vintage Books, 1961);Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (London:Penguin, 1991).
27
Doreen Massey, D For Space (London: Sage, 2005).
28
Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, pp 55-56.
29
Richard Sennett, Civility, Urban Age Bulletin 1, Summer 2005, http://www.urban-
age.net/0_downloads/archive/Richard_Sennett-Civility-Bulletin1.pdf (accessed 20 July 2007)
30
Ibid., p1
31
Ibid., p1

Page 12
The third type of relationship between Jews and public space was in the
East End of London, in the nineteenth century. The area around Brick
Lane had no walls or police protection and the Jews could openly express
their culture and their religious beliefs – but there was very little
meaningful contact between Jews and their neighbours. “Rather it was a
space abandoned to its own devices by the dominant culture. Here lies
the secret of the third model: civility based on indifference.”32
In this situation, public spaces might be ostentatiously shared by groups,
but without bringing them together. The present-day city facilitates such
social dissociation, with its increasing provision of segmented spaces
based on self-selection and focusing on a narrow range of activities. For
example, writing about present-day London, the architect Indy Johar
questions the value of places such as Chinatown, ‘Banglatown’ (as
present-day Brick Lane is sometimes referred to) and the Docklands.33 He
argues that all three are essentially consumer products – highly
programmed, themed and bite-sized environments, the sometimes
‘multicultural’ stamp of might be attractive to the public for a short
while. However, this atmosphere can be discarded a moment later,
without affecting anyone’s anonymity and autonomy, let alone creating
trust or increased understanding. Hence, whilst sometimes highly
successful in their own right, they perpetuate the separation between
groups, a status quo which Richard Sennett refers to as ‘dissociation as a
version of civility. Fragmentation as a form of freedom. A social
compromise which works against shared citizenship.’34

Never neutral
In this light, the more explicitly and actively universalist model as
epitomised by Berlin seems to have its merits. However it has its own
problems, since its promise of equality and neutrality also presumes
homogeneity in public. Assuming that spaces are neutral can become a
smoke-screen for hiding inequalities and neglecting different groups’
diverse needs, as though they do not matter. Instead, many authors have
argued that Western cities should rise to the challenge of planning a
space which different groups can use differently, building on the
potential for adaptation to shifting patterns of need.35 Claire Rishbeth
argues that design is increasingly important in terms of inter-ethnic
integration and interaction.36 She claims that it is part of a number of
issues that prevent ethnic minorities from fully using open public spaces,
including fear of racist attacks and different use-patterns.

32
Richard Sennett, Civility, Urban Age Bulletin 1, Summer 2005 p 2.
33
Indy Johar ‘Public Space is Dead; Long Live Public Space’ in: Joost Beunderman et al.
BCN-LDN 2020 (Barcelona: Fundació Ramon Trias Fargas, 2007) pp 59-64.
34
Richard Sennett, Civility, Urban Age Bulletin 1 Summer 2005 p 2.
35
Jane M. Jacobs, Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City (New York:
Routledge, 1996); Leonie Sandercock, Cosmopolis II: Mongrel Cities of the 21st Century
(London and New York: Continuum, 2003); Iris Marion, Young Justice and the Politics of
Difference. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
36
Claire Rishbeth ‘Ethnic Minority Groups and the Design on Public Open Space: an
Inclusive Landscape?’ Landscape Research 26-4, 2001.

Page 13
For example, in past decades the Turkish minority in and near cities such
as Amsterdam and Berlin started using the public parks for barbeques, in
turn sparking a trend among the wider public. However, as Risbeth
claims, parks and open spaces in the UK are still largely designed as a
reflection of a more traditional European culture with a preference for
naturalistic landscapes. If coupled to more restricted definitions of
appropriate use of greenspace, such diversification of activities can easily
be thwarted.

The reality of public space

Some crucial factors need to be taken into account when thinking about
what inclusive public space means in the contemporary social and
physical environment.
First, the number of spaces which fall unambiguously into the category of
‘public’ is dwindling. The public sector has become increasingly willing to
open itself up to the involvement of private businesses, creating hybrid
spaces in which corporate and public concerns are very much intertwined.
The Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, for instance, has a
branch of a high street coffee shop operating in its foyer, in a bid to
create a less austere initial impression on entering the building. Public
galleries and museums frequently charge entry to a part of their
exhibitions, creating some areas which are free for all, and others with
restricted entry. At the same time, the private sector has realised the
public’s appreciation of ‘traditional’ town squares and has attempted to
recreate it within commercial spaces. Orchard Square shopping centre in
Sheffield is reminiscent of a civic town square but, in fact, its purpose is
exclusively commercial. In other words, ‘public’ space is often not
exclusively public, whilst commercial and other private spaces (e.g.
office lobbies) take on the superficial characteristics of public space.37
Second, many seemingly ‘public’ spaces have implicit barriers to entry
that diminish their truly public character. Zygmunt Bauman refers to
these as spaces which are ‘public yet not civil’ and defines them as
including spaces which are awe-inspiring but not conducive to lingering;
places in which users are individually busy and active, but do not interact
with one another and places that are transient in character, like waiting
rooms in train stations.38 For members of minorities, the number of public
spaces falling into this category may well be greater, as there may be
additional deterrents created by unfamiliarity and fear for hostile or
discriminatory behaviour. Such fears are corroborated and reflected in
the 2003-04 crimes figures which show, for example, that there were
4,179 prosecutions for racially aggravated crimes, of which 1,056 were
assaults or harassment.39 Poor physical surroundings have also been
identified as a causal factor in violent racist attacks and other types of

37
Melissa Mean and Charlie Tims, People Make Places, (London: Demos/JRF, 2005).
38
See Z Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity, 2000).
39
Crown Prosecution Service, Racist Incident Monitoring Annual Report 2003-2004
(London: CPS, 2004).

Page 14
crime, creating a permissive environment in which offending becomes
almost more acceptable.40
The blurring of boundaries between public and private space creates
definitional challenges. What do we mean by public spaces? A Demos
study found that, when asked which public spaces they use regularly,
many people tended to mention places which fall outside of traditional
public space definitions.41 But as the authors explain, ‘public space is
better understood less as a predetermined physical space, and more as an
experience created by an interaction between people and place.’
For this reason, Ray Oldenburg – an American academic based in Florida –
developed an idea of ‘third spaces’.42 These are neutral places (neither
home nor workplace) in which the attendees are neither ‘hosts’ nor
‘guests’ and where people should feel relaxed and at ease. He highlights
the importance of these informal places, ranging from coffee shops to
bookstores, car boot sales and supermarkets, for maintaining civil society
and democratic engagement.
In other words, meaningful interventions in public space must be guided
by a definition based in the judgements that people make of public
space, rather than by a static definition that obscures the case for
creating change. For this report, we build on this broader definition of
public spaces, which links into the wider notion of people's everyday
experiences and spatial practices, in order to capture the broadest range
of successful interventions and reflect the reality of people's daily
experiences and behaviours.

40
S Isal, Preventing Racist Violence: Work with Actual and Potential Perpetrators – Learning
from Practice to Policy Change (Runnymede Trust, 2005); Annette Hastings, John Flint,
Carol McKenzie and Carl Mills, Cleaning up neighbourhoods: Environmental problems and
service provision in deprived neighbourhoods (York: JRF/ Polity Press 2005); Martin Innes
and Vanessa Jones, Neighbourhood security and urban change: Risk, resilience and
recovery (York: JRF, 2006).
41
Melissa Mean and Charlie Tims People Make Places, (London: Demos/JRF, 2005).
42
R Oldenburg, The great good place: cafes, coffee shops, bookstores, bars, hair salons,
and other other hangouts at the heart of the community (New York: Marlowe, 1989).

Page 15
Chapter 2: public spaces and interaction

Political theorist Claus Offe offers one explanation for the way in which
social ties between individuals within society cement the wider sense of
common interest that citizens need to share in order to live together.43
Whilst focusing mainly on the level of the nation state, the relation
between citizens and the state, and the ingredients of ‘nationhood’, his
analysis puts strong emphasis on the horizontal relation between citizens.
This relationship is especially important for people who are new to a
country, or who do not share the same sense of common historical or
geographical ‘belonging’. In particular, Offe emphasises two factors

i) trust: citizens must trust one another to comply with the

rules.
ii) solidarity: citizens must still recognise the value of
contributing to the common good even when they don’t
directly benefit as a result.

We know that public spaces are vitally important for that, because they
are where citizens often encounter one another. Trust – as well as
solidarity - is often built partly through familiarity, the gradual breaking
down of the barriers of ‘otherness’, and the recognition of shared
interests and a common humanity between what still are strangers. For
the same reason, the places where citizens interact with the state play an
essential part in building those citizens’ trust in the state within which
they live.
When it comes to diversity and change, particularly in communities which
are experiencing rapid rates of mobility and the tensions that often go
with it, trust becomes an essential element for building relationships
between citizens (and different communities) and between citizens and
the state.

Social capital, civility and trust

The issue of trust is closely bound up with that of social capital - the
social networks, shared norms and co-operative relationships that help
people and communities get along, and which sustains their collective
efficacy in the face of change.44 The theory of social capital tends to
distinguish between three forms of social capital – bonding, bridging and
linking social capital:45

43
Claus Offe ‘How Can We Trust Our Fellow Citizens?’ in: Mark E Warren (ed), Democracy
and Trust, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) pp 42-87.
44
R Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 2000) pp 22-23; Robert J Sampson, Stephen Raudenbush, and Felton
Earls, ‘Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy’, Science
1997-277:918-24.
45
Alejandro Portes, ‘Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology’,
Annual Review of Sociology 24: 15-18 (1998); Michael Woolcock, ‘The Place of Social
Capital in Understanding Social and Economic Outcomes’ Isuma 2, no. 1 (2001) p 11-17.

Page 16
 • Bonding social capital refers to the strong ties within homogeneous
groups, which provides the social and psychological supports that
people need for getting by in their everyday activities. This power
of such in-group loyalties, however, can generate negative
outcomes such as the potential exclusion of outsiders or a stifling
of individuality and autonomy for in-group members.
• Bridging social capital spans across such homogeneous groups
through cross cultural and cross generation activities. According to
Robert Putnam, bridging capital is useful for information diffusion
and to connect to external resources, building on the notion of
‘the strength of weak ties’ as outlined by Mark Granovetter in the
1970s.46
• Linking social capital links individuals and groups to the formal
sphere of participation with institutions and organisations outside
the immediate community; the main distinction between bridging
and linking social capital is the ‘horizontal’ nature of the former
and the ‘vertical’ working of the latter.

The value of a well-functioning public realm lies primarily in its potential

to create bonds of the second and third kind, bridging citizens across
social cleavages by providing the setting for daily interaction and enabling
relevant links with public institutions and community resources.
Stephen Vertovec emphasises the importance of such ‘everyday practices
for getting-on with others in the inherently fleeting encounters that
comprise city life’ and uses the term ‘civil-integration’, in contrast to the
‘deep and meaningful’ encounters that he feels are unlikely to occur
regularly in the context of super-diversity.47 The acquiring and
routinisation of civil-interaction to him include ‘simple forms of
acknowledgement, acts of restricted helpfulness, types of personal
consideration, courtesies, and “indifference to diversity”.’48 He calls for
recognition that through such socio-spatial practices, immigrants may
actually be better integrated than often thought. Moreover, such
interactions can grow shared meanings and values, as well as trust and a
basis for cooperation for collective purposes. Hence it is crucial, he
argues, that these kinds of daily civility should be negotiated and
promoted alongside wider ambitions for better relationships.
Amin underlines this and points the fact that public space in its widest
sense can be an operating mode for generating a kind of studied trust in
urban multiplicity and public acceptance of ‘throwntogetherness’.49

46
Mark Granovetter, ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 78,
No. 6, May 1973, pp 1360-1380.
47
Stephen Vertovec, New complexities of cohesion in Britain: Super-diversity,
transnationalism and civil-integration, p3.
48
Ibid, p3
49
Ash Amin, Thinking Past Integration and Community Cohesion, Paper for presentation at
2007 COMPAS Annual Conference, Oxford University, 5-6 July 2007. p 6.

Page 17
Basic factors of ‘good quality space’
In part, the foundations of such civil-integration and trust can be
understood in terms of relatively straightforward elements of good public
space. Much has been written on the relationship between sense of trust
and security in places and their physical state, with authors agreeing that
it is inevitably a two-way process: on the one hand it relies on people
adopting, using and managing the place. As Worpole and Knox put it:
‘people make places, more than places make people.’50 On the other
hand, there is a recognition that the basic state of maintenance of places
– both physical and social – conditions in no small degree the interactions
between people: the quality setting of places can co-condition the
actions of people that in turn make places.51
In this context, there is now a common recognition of a set of basic
factors that underpin public space that is socially successful.52 In
synthesis, the best public spaces are considered to be

• multi-use, with different activities embedded or allowed

throughout the day (such as e.g. shopping, commuting, play, the
office lunch-hour, a café);
• accessible and easy to move through to anyone who desires
access, as networked spaces rather than stand-alone without
barriers to any groups either physically or symbolically (special
attention, in this regard, being paid to groups such as the elderly,
children, women and ethnic minorities);
• legible in lay-out and design, with clear and recognisable routes,
defined edges and clarity about the boundaries between public
and private;
• locally relevant, designed with local character and the community
in mind through participation;
• adaptable to people’s diverse and changing needs and desires,
with no overly prescriptive design but conversely leaving room for
self-organisation and encouraging a degree of appropriation;
• open-ended, without exclusive domination of singular and
incontestable cultural messages;
• safe and welcoming, give the idea of comfort and a degree of
control, with for example good lighting and sightlines, and paying
attention to different groups’ needs with regard to safety.

50
Ken Worpole and Katharine Knox The Social Value of Public Spaces, p 2.
51
Annette Hastings, John Flint, Carol McKenzie and Carl Mills, Cleaning up
neighbourhoods: Environmental problems and service provision in deprived neighbourhoods
(York: JRF/ Polity Press, 2005); Martin Innes and Vanessa Jones, Neighbourhood security
and urban change: Risk, resilience and recovery (York: JRF, 2006); CABE, Decent parks?
Decent behaviour? The link between the quality of parks and user behaviour (London:
CABE, 2005).
52
See: Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, (New York: Random
House and Vintage Books, 1961); CABE, Better civic buildings and spaces (London: CABE
2002); CABE, Paving the way: how we achieve clean, safe and attractive streets (London:
CABE 2002); CABE, By Design: urban design in the planning system: towards better
practice (London: CABE/DETR, 2000); CABE, Safer Places: the planning system and crime
prevention (Home Office & ODPM, HMSO, London, 2004).

Page 18
In sum, the success of public space is predicated on the way in which it
encourages use: diverse use and diverse activities encourage diverse
people. Hence public space should form the everyday setting of activities
that people can undertake in different degrees of ‘togetherness’, rather
than a set piece design.
It is this dimension – the extent to which public spaces can foster
everyday positive interaction between people – that is at the core of this
report. The CRE has previously commissioned research that has
investigated how different types of interaction can help neighbours to live
together and foster different sorts of social capital within communities.53
It affirmed the need for a diversity of interactions, as people interact
differently at different times for different motivations, and have
different needs that need to be acknowledged before any intervention.
Most of all, it emphasises that interaction can never be forced or false,
and instead takes time to achieve as it is essentially about people’s habits
in their public behaviour.
Creating projects that change these habits and foster positive interactions
is therefore challenging. In this and the next chapter we will draw on the
case studies undertaken in this research, as well as wider studies on
public space practice, to explore some of the underpinning principles that
help to sustain and increase interaction in the UK and beyond.

Public space in the UK

The UK is witnessing the emergence of new types of public space in its
cities and neighbourhoods: formal and informal, public and semi-public,
deliberate or spontaneous. These newly emerging spaces not only reflect
that public experiences of a space can matter more for its role than its
physical characteristics, but also that public spaces mean completely
different things for different groups.
This research focuses on such new spaces and has identified eight main
types of these ‘spaces of potential’. These are not to be interpreted in a
narrowly spatial sense: in practice many places will have elements that
cut across more than one definition, since the category into which a
space falls is dictated by the activity happening within it at different
times. Cutting across all these different types of space is the central
importance of trust and confidence from users in creating valuable public
space.
The eight types of space are:

• Exchange spaces: places where people exchange ideas,

information and goods
• Productive spaces: used by people engaged in activities to grow or
create goods

53
SHM, Promoting interaction between ethnic communities: a research project for the
Commission for Racial Equality (London: CRE, 2006).

Page 19
 • Spaces of services provision: support services are run from these
spaces, either by statutory or voluntary providers
• Activity spaces: where people gather for leisure, such as for play,
sport or informal events
• Democratic / participative spaces: for shared decision-making or
governance
• Staged spaces: ‘one-off’ special occasions where people are
brought together for a specific purpose
• In-between spaces: places which are located between
communities
• Virtual spaces: non-physical spaces, such as those created online
by social networking sites

Exchange spaces
Dialogue, contact and exchange of ideas, information and goods are a
universal human need - although the sites in which this exchange takes
place are dictated by people’s lifestyles and preferences. Exchange sites
are sites of potential which provide the possibility for people to interact
in their local area, during the pursuit of their everyday needs, should they
want to.
Markets are one of the best examples of places where one type of
exchange – economic – can take place and provide a natural place for
positive interaction to emerge. Our case study on Queen’s Market shows
that an intricate set of factors can make a difference for a market’s
success or failure, commercially as well as a site for interaction. The
current market complex’s location, physical layout (though not its actual
design), traders, management regime, goods and reputation all work
together to sustain a place which has great local significance.
Underpinned by a long historic presence in the area, this local sense of
pride and ownership sustains a highly specific sets of tacit as well as
explicit understandings between the traders, who ‘set the tone’ for the
place, and between those who visit the market from further away or from
the local community. In contrast to Queens Market, another market close
by, in an area with similar demographic conditions, does not display the
same local significance and does arguably very little for that town centre,
economically and certainly in terms of interaction. Here, the immediate
spatial context, the physical layout and the management and trader body
did not create a similarly successful place for exchange. In that sense,
Queen’s Market forms a clear case of how, to quote Ash Amin, ‘The
micro-cultures of place matter.’54

54
Ash Amin ‘The Multicultural City:Living with Ethnic Diversity’ The Edge Issue 10 July 2002
http://www.esrcsocietytoday.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/about/CI/CP/the_edge/issue10/mul
ticultural_2.aspx?ComponentId=10682&SourcePageId=3446 (accessed 20 July 2007).

Page 20
Case Study 1: Queen’s Market and East Ham Market, Newham, London
Recent publications, including studies by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation
and the New Economics Foundation, have underlined the success of
Queen’s Market both as a social space within the community and as a
local economic factor of great importance to the livelihood of poor local
communities. One of Queen’s Market’s biggest advantages stems from its
location. It is directly off the high street and close to the Underground
station, making it accessible for people on their way to and from the
centre, as well as increasing the degree to which the market is in a
‘neutral’ space. Because of the market’s reputation for being cheap,
people are also drawn there for more tangible reasons than seeing people
they know, or having the opportunity to buy foods from regions across the
world that wouldn’t get shelf-space in a supermarket.
The management team responsible for the running of the market enforces
specific measures to ensure that the present balance between different
users in the market is preserved. The entry regime is restricted by a
waiting list based on type of business, to prevent dominance of a single
type of goods. The management also intervenes to block the introduction
of stalls that would run against the needs of the majority of shoppers at
the market; attempts to introduce vintage clothing stalls have, for
instance, been rejected. The sale of religious items in the market is also
forbidden and political or other canvassing is also limited to general and
local elections. Public ownership of the market space also keeps prices
low: it currently costs £75 per week to rent a stall.
A comparative case study visit to nearby East Ham market revealed that
Queen’s Market’s loyalists may be right to suggest that their market is a
fairly unique case, however. Despite being only one Underground stop
away from Queen’s Market and in an area with similar social and
economic characteristics, East Ham market is a very different place. It is
located in a separate market building rather than in a roofed open space.
The layout is chaotic, making It hard to find one's way, and the mix of
goods for sale is less varied to Queen’s Market. The overall impression is
of a far less vibrant space than Queen’s Market, with much less
community life happening in the periphery. In fact, shoppers on East Ham
High Street often mentioned doing weekly visits to Queen’s Market for
fresh fruit and vegetables.
Markets can make a positive contribution to neighbourhoods and
community interaction, but getting it right can be difficult. There is an
intricate balance of factors at play, all of which influence the way in
which a market works and the role which it is then able to play in the
community. These factors can be hard to pin down – as one trader put it,
“it is hard to put your finger on what makes for the ‘magic’ or ‘buzz’ of a
market – some of them have it, some don’t”. But the benefits that stem
from the markets that do have the right atmosphere to make a
compelling case for continuing to work with local commercial spaces as
sites where interactions between otherwise separate communities can
take place.

Page 21
Productive spaces
Productive open spaces are used by people engaged in activities to
create, or grow, products and goods for everyday use. Allotments and
vegetable patches in communal gardens are good examples of this.
Growing food can be significant for a great diversity of people, not least
because growing food can be a way to connect to the culture within
which an individual grew up, as well as a strategy for sharing it with
others within the family or community who might not be familiar with
it.55 Growing food is also cheaper than buying it, which is an important
factor for people on a low income.
The ‘Concrete to Coriander’ project in Birmingham started with the
explicit aim to promote allotments to South Asian women who were
previously under-represented amongst allotment owners and users. The
project has engaged a group of around 25 women in growing vegetables,
learning new horticultural skills and adopting a healthier lifestyle. It now
attracts women from other backgrounds as well, who often engage other
family members (children and grandparents) in the activity. As one user
explains, the exchange doesn’t stop at gardening, and encourages
neighbourliness: ‘We teach each other languages: I teach the ladies some
words in English and in return I learn Bangladeshi words.’56
Spaces run by Green Connection in Nottingham, where allotments have
incorporated many members of the (South) Asian community, function as
a social space, as do the Calthorpe Community Gardens in Camden which
also use gardening as a catalyst for good relationships between different
groups. In Camden, the community garden has pioneered self-building of
an on-site community centre and models of collective decision-making, as
well as offering small plots for locals, including numerous members from
the Bangladeshi community. The Commission for Architecture and the
Built Environment (CABE) emphasises allotments as a key example for
(semi-) public spaces to create wider value in encouraging cross-
community and cross-cultural ties, leading to small instances of
cooperation and exchange and giving people a common stake in the
quality of their public place.57

Case Study 2: Bath Place Community Centre, Leamington Spa

Recently, Leamington has played host to a significant number of migrant
workers from poorer EU countries, creating a fresh set of challenges for a
town that is not as uniformly wealthy as outsiders often believe. For
many years, Bath Place Community Centre has worked in one of the
poorer areas of Leamington, to the north of the centre, trying to address
the needs of people living on the margins of the town’s economic good

55
Claire Rishbeth ‘Ethnic Minority Groups and the Design on Public Open Space: an
Inclusive Landscape?’ Landscape Research 26-4, 2001.
56
‘Concrete to coriander, Birmingham’, Women’s Environment Network Newsletter No 5,
Autumn 2002, http://www.wen.org.uk/local_food/Reports/TOBFAutumn02.pdf (accessed 20
July 2007).
57
CABE, The Value of Public Space, how high quality parks and public spaces create
economic, social and environmental value, (London: CABE, 2004).

Page 22
fortune.
Bath Place bases its effectiveness on embedding its activities in the habits
of people’s daily lives. A central part of their offer has been providing
cheap, healthy food at their café, which offers meals everyday at a
differential rate for low income families (£1.20 per day for unwaged
people; 50p for children). ‘We do seed to plate’, one volunteer explains:
‘we have allotments where we grow the veg. The café is important for
bringing people in to the centre who might not have come before.’ The
café is a noisy social space, populated by a mixture of regulars, parents
arriving to collect their children at the end of the morning session in the
nursery and regulars who have wandered into the café, as well as first-
time visitors.
The centre has also fostered a strong partnership with Adult Education in
the area which has been a major part of bringing in the newer residents
in Leamington. ‘New arrivals often come to the centre through the
English as a Second Language programme, or via other adult education
modules’, a tutor explains. ‘But as people grow more familiar with the
centre and what we do, they also use other services. Some come to “Stay
and Play” where parents come to the centre with their children; rather
than leaving the children, the parents stay around to play with the toys
together and meet other parents living nearby. Children are an important
way of bringing people together… when you’ve got kids, it gives you more
in common than you might have had before.’
The informality of the centre’s work also extends to their relationships
with other community organisations, which is another of the ways in
which they try to maintain the diversity of their user-group. ‘There’s an
African-Caribbean community centre just down the road’, Steve, manager
of the centre says, ‘and we’ll use each others facilities, especially if
something goes wrong at one or other of our centres. None of it is ever
formal, but users of their centre have come in and used our IT equipment
sometimes and we keep one another in touch about what we’re doing.
People can use both centres for different things… two ladies from there
came in to use our computers when theirs were broken and now they still
come into the café here all the time.’

Spaces of service provision

There are many services run both by the state and the voluntary and
community sectors that benefit people’s everyday lives and, as a result,
can act as a contact point between diverse groups of people. This
contact, especially when it endures over time, can break down people’s
ideas about ‘otherness’ and challenge burgeoning prejudices. People also
build bonds through the shared experiences of using the service. The
potential for interaction does not have to be confined to interaction that
takes place in the institution in question. Much has been made recently of

Page 23
the potential of ‘school gate’ interaction to facilitate informal contact
between the parents or carers of the children.58
In Sheffield, a special needs school for children from a diversity of social
and ethnic backgrounds is currently exploring plans to create a sheltered
space for parents waiting to collect their children which will encourage
walking to school (parents will not have to wait in the rain when the
weather is bad), but also will strengthen relationships between parents.
Such proposals for small physical interventions recognise the importance
of the social potential that lies in minute spatial practices as the daily
school run, and could equally be applied to improving opportunities for
informal gatherings near other public and community facilities,
cultivating conviviality through improving space and creating what Ash
Amin calls ‘urban plenitude’. ‘Here, the promise of social regard comes
from having access to collective resources, the knowledge that more does
not become less through usage, the assurance of being part of a wider
fabric of urban life.’59

Case study 3: King David’s Primary, Birmingham

King David’s Primary in Birmingham is a local state school, set up to meet
the needs of the local Jewish community. The school has a remarkable
roll call of pupils. However, whilst around half their students are,
predictably, Jewish, the other half are overwhelmingly from Muslim
families in the local area – some of whom have even moved into the
locality to get into this particular school. The school has achieved this
without any specific intervention, instead focusing on maintaining high
educational standards above all. As a result it is rated as ‘good’ – the
second highest Ofsted classification. Muslim festivals are recognised
alongside Jewish holy days and Muslim children may wear a cap if they
wish.
Around this primary school, a wider community of connected families
emerges though shared commitment to the school. Despite the fact that
the school must maintain a low profile and high security in a city where
anti-semitic attacks have been common, there is a supportive and
integrated community of parents, which articulate a shared commitment
to the school’s ethos and teaching. Teaching staff also report the extent
to which investing in their mixed school has yielded results far into the
future, with pupils from all backgrounds sustaining their friendships into
adulthood.

58
David Lammy, ‘Close Encounters’, Prospect Magazine 23 March 2006,
http://www.davidlammy.co.uk/da/33009 (accessed 20 July 2007); Ellen Bennett, ‘The secret
of community cohesion can be found at the supermarket, says CRE chairman’, Building
Magazine 18 July 2003,
http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=306&storyCode=1029889, (accessed 20
July 2007).
59
Ash Amin, Thinking Past Integration and Community Cohesion, Paper for presentation at
2007 COMPAS Annual Conference, Oxford University, 5-6 July 2007 p 7.

Page 24
These types of interaction do not take place in a vacuum. Divisions and
differences that matter outside the school or community centre might
sometimes be broken down, but they may also affect these very
institutions, potentially in a negative way. Additionally, any service
institution has its own power dynamics: the interaction between different
groups takes places in formal settings, circumscribed through well-
defined roles such as management-worker, councillor-client, teacher-
student.60 Such power can be used both to build bridges or fences
between individuals and communities, creating a need for constant
awareness and reflection among practitioners.

Activity spaces
The provision of leisure activities for different age groups can be another
point of contact. Sport and children’s play are widely recognised as a site
where dynamics between groups can be altered, especially given the
importance of tackling behavioural routines at a young age.61 Hence
spaces for physical activities - permanent or temporary, formal or
informal – create opportunities to break through ingrained patterns of
prejudice and avoidance.
Heywood Park in Bolton is a traditional industrial neighbourhood with
terraced houses around former cotton mills and with a mixed White
working class and Asian population. It has a Council-run indoor and
outdoor play facility and in the afternoons, parents and carers gather to
chat while their children are playing. Relationships are good between
children from the different ethnic groups in the area. Problems arise,
however, for those over 14, as youth work and physical activities for them
are lacking in the area. The park has been a target for vandalism and
arson attacks in the past, as well as a site of violence between different
groups of young people.
However, there are numerous positive examples of places where the
potential of sports and play includes the older age groups. This is for
instance the case in Leicester, known for its ethnic diversity and
relatively harmonious community relations. Here, the football club
(Leicester City) is engaged in efforts to bring teams of different
backgrounds together to play against each other, or against the local
police force, changing the terms of interactions between groups where
tensions have been a problem in the past.
Activity spaces need not be limited to sport fields and pitches. For
example, Home Zones were introduced by the Department of Transport
following the example of Dutch residential street design. Within these
zones, children’s play is seen as the priority user of a street; other users –
including motorists – have to adapt to this, which increases safety and
confidence among all pedestrians. Perceived danger of traffic is an

60
Stephen Vertovec, New complexities of cohesion in Britain: Super-diversity,
transnationalism and civil-integration.
61
SHM, Promoting interaction between ethnic communities: a research project for the
Commission for Racial Equality (London: CRE, 2006).

Page 25
important detractor from use of the public realm,62 and hence measures
that allow for more outdoors activity have positive effects. In his
evaluation of Home Zones projects, Tim Gill writes that apart from an
increase in children playing on the street, ‘levels of contact and
interaction between adults increase, creating a stronger sense of
community’.63
Often, less radical measures can also be effective. Bristol-based charity
Streets Alive! aims to create such opportunities locally by helping
residents to organise street parties, thereby attempting to generate a
wider shift in thinking in how communities can use the public realm on
their doorstep. Such initiatives sit alongside a range of organisations
making a similar case: Living Streets, Sustrans and Play England, for
example. All these groups have called strongly for streets to be
reconceived around the needs of children, pedestrians and cyclists, to
change the nature of the streets in our towns and cities and to enhance
their potential as a setting for everyday conviviality.

Democratic / participative spaces

Co-production is one of the main factors underpinning the success of
public or semi-public spaces. Authentic engagement and participative
governance affect interaction amongst users. A recent Ford Foundation
project concluded: ‘participation works’, as those taking part in tasks
that belong to a shared local agenda could temporarily set aside or
supersede other divisions and form rallying points.64 Similarly, the charity
Groundwork UK works across the country in localised arrangements to
provide environmental improvements in deprived neighbourhoods. Based
on the notion that ‘the environment is a powerful shared concern around
which often very diverse communities can come together’, 65 the projects
of local Groundwork trusts’ engage often highly diverse communities to
improve their daily surroundings. By doing so they provide learning and
skills opportunities, whilst at the same time tackling crime and anti-social
behaviour, reducing littering and graffiti, improving health and learning
and advancing community harmony.
Elsewhere, a project by MIT students and the theorist Manuel Castells in
Zaragoza, Spain, aims to harness the power of cutting edge digital
technology to enable local communities to personalise public spaces.
Highly visible digital community notice-boards with continuously updated
content will act as a resource for local residents and a digital graffiti wall
is underpinned by training in digital arts and continuously shows the
evolving content of people’s art on a large screen.66

62
G Valentine, Public Space and the Culture of Childhood (London: Ashgate, 2004).
63
Tim Gill, Can I play out – Lessons from London Play’s Home Zones Project (London Play,
2007) p 22.
64
R Bach, Changing Relations: Newcomers and Established Residents in U.S. Communities
(New York: Ford Foundation, 1993) quoted in: Stephen Vertovec New complexities of
cohesion in Britain: Super-diversity, transnationalism and civil-integration, p 33.
65 Groundwork Birmingham and Solihull website, http://www.groundwork-
birmingham.org.uk/ (accessed 20 July 2007).
66
Milla Digital: Designing a new century public realm (MIT / City of Zaragoza 2006).

Page 26
In some cases, this can take the form of ‘self-build spaces’. Inderpaul
Johar cites the phenomenon of Sikh Gurudwaras and Community Living
rooms as two expressions of a wider trend of community asset vehicles,
such as Community Interest Companies and development trusts. These
have resources devolved from the ‘public’ to the community. In some
cases, such as with many Gurudwaras and other religious self-builds, they
are constructed ‘entirely using community donations, governed, managed
and operated by a community dispersed throughout the UK and
internationally.’67 Johar concludes that such highly participative places
are ‘the built manifestation of difference [and therefore] they could risk
being exclusive’68; however, they can also ‘work to galvanise inclusively
through practical exchanges and the sense of building a common
project.’69
But emphasis on participation does not mean asking local communities to
rally ‘as one’. Dissent and disagreement are an inherent part of local
democracy and as such (depending on the form they take) should be
embraced. As Amin argues, full community consensus is neither
achievable nor desirable; the key is open and vigorous public culture
which ‘accepts the rights of different claimants, the right to air
disagreement and is committed to decisions that flow from the clashes of
an empowered and democratic public.’70

Case Study 4: Thames Valley Police, Slough

Slough can claim to be the most diverse place in England. If you were to
pick any two people at random from its population of 120,000, there
would be a 62 per cent chance that they would be from different ethnic
backgrounds. Slough alone is home to more than 33,000 people from an
Asian ethnic minority background.71
In the wake of the attacks on the US in September 2001, tensions
between local groups increased, generating the need for an increased
visible presence from Thames Valley Police. From the start of the
operation, local police officers worked closely with local community
groups (particularly those with members from each different ethnic
group), inviting them to operational briefings. These same community
representatives were also invited to shadow police officers in carrying out
the duties described at the briefings, to ensure that they were adhering
to the instructions that had been agreed.
Police officers were instructed to behave warmly towards local residents
and regular officers were assisted by Black Police Association officers
equipped with a greater knowledge of cultural and language differences,
allowing them to police minority communities more sensitively. As a

67
Indy Johar ‘Public Space is Dead; Long Live Public Space’ in: Joost Beunderman et al.
BCN-LDN 2020 (Barcelona: Fundació Ramon Trias Fargas, 2007) p 62.
68
Ibid., p 62.
69
Ibid., p 62.
70
Ash Amin ‘The Multicultural City: Living with Ethnic Diversity’ The Edge, 2002.
71
Ethnicity profiles for the South East CRE website,
http://www.cre.gov.uk/diversity/map/southeast/index.html (accessed 20 July 2007).

Page 27
result, the rising tensions were diffused without serious incident. In
circumstances in which forays into public spaces in Slough were becoming
increasingly worrying for local ethnic minority residents, an increased
police presence could have heightened the perceived threat and – by
association – the likelihood that violence could ensue. But in reality, by
adapting to the circumstances in which they found themselves working,
the police were able to re-establish the sense of ownership that all
Slough’s local residents – both white and ethnic minority – have of the
public spaces in their town.
This collaborative approach to public order and safety shows the
importance of community participation not just in the creation, but also
the management of public spaces: feelings of safety and mutual trust are
no goods that can be simply ‘delivered’, but which can only be generated
collaboratively through participation and the possibility of democratic
contestation.

Staged spaces
Staging events is not usually part of the informal interaction agenda.
However, events can play an important role. Theorists such as Amin
emphasise that symbolism and a conscious public culture matter as one
part of a wider policy that otherwise aims at strengthening weak ties and
favouring casual encounters.72
However, events should not be seen as one-offs or as levers that will
magically spark interaction between groups. Research on ‘what works’ for
organisations involved in community relations in Northern Ireland over the
last 20 years showed that one-off events do not tend to create the sort of
lasting behavioural shift that is generally needed to make a qualitative
73
difference to separate communities. Instead, events should act as a
point of entry for making crucial first connections. They can also be
celebrations of shared values and successes.
The London Borough of Newham has taken an even more practical
approach. The Borough has an exceptionally diverse population and high
levels of social deprivation. In the summer of 2006, it organised the Big
Sunday as an occasion for celebrating local communities, as well as a way
to let people know about the work of the Council and voluntary sector
services. Around 30,000 residents attended and, owing to a highly
simplified digital sign-up system for services and courses, the event
worked as a measurable start for civic and community involvement,
thereby increasing the potential of bridging social capital.
The use of symbolic events at critical moments in the lives of the
community can be very important. After police discovered that three of

72
Ash Amin ‘The Multicultural City: Living with Ethnic Diversity’ The Edge, 2002.
73
Institute for Conflict Research Community Cohesion, Applying Learning from Groundwork
in Northern Ireland (Belfast ICR 2004); also see P Burton, R Goodlad, J Croft, J Abbott, A
Hastings, G Macdonald and T Slater, What Works in Community Involvement in Area-based
Initiatives? A Systematic Review of the Literature. (London, Home Office, 2004).

Page 28
the London Underground bombers came from the same area of Leeds –
Beeston – this small corner of the city found itself under siege from the
international media and police. One year on, residents made the decision
to mark the anniversary of the bombings. Residents were consulted about
the form the memorial should take and the decision was taken to plant a
tree, ‘reflecting both a commitment to peace as well as representing the
residents’ unity.’74 The focus was on a forward-looking ceremony, with
the memorial providing people with a space to reflect within the
community as it grew and changed.
In Glasgow, the Hidden Gardens were developed as a sanctuary garden
explicitly to bridge the gap between different groups and was dedicated
to peace and inspiration. It focused on the complete transformation of an
area of industrial wasteland behind an arts centre. The design process
involved an arts charity, landscape architects, a team of international
artists and the local community in Pollokshields.75

In-between spaces
Segregation and residential separation can be a problem in many
communities. It is often down to circumstances rather than choice, but in
general it goes hand in hand with creation of clear psychological and
physical boundaries. When it comes to rethinking the wider use of public
spaces, physical territorialism is therefore a key challenge.
Territorialism in itself is not necessarily racially focused - often it is
merely an expression of neighbourhood attachment taken to an extreme.
To a degree, it should be recognised as an inherent aspect of young
people’s lives which only becomes problematic in combination with other
forms of deprivation and negative behaviour. Neighbourhood gangs as
well as segregated communities are thus examples of the danger of
‘bonding social capital’ of the wrong kind, where too much belonging
leads to the creation of clear territorial and psychological boundaries.
To counter such dynamics, policymakers and planners must enhance the
border zones between communities, rather than focusing exclusively on
the centres of communities. Richard Sennett describes the failure of a
project in which he was involved as an example of how ‘boundary
thinking can miss opportunities’. Tasked with the creation of a new
market (La Marqueta) in Harlem, New York, ‘we planners chose to locate
La Marqueta in the centre of Spanish Harlem twenty blocks away, in the
very centre of the community, and to regard 96th Street [where Harlem
changes into a very wealthy area – the Upper East Side] as a dead edge,
where nothing much happens. We chose wrongly. Had we located the
market on that street, we might have encouraged activity which brought
the rich and the poor into some daily commercial contact. Wiser planners
have since learned from our mistake, and on the West Side of Manhattan
sought to locate new community resources at the edges between

74
A newsletter for residents of Beeston Hill & Holbeck Summer 2006,
http://www.leeds.gov.uk/files/2006/week24/inter__a3c225c7-97f2-4ad3-8f38-
8e8503e23b32_90c6a080-5f6a-404c-934e-3c9aa8c2fb25.pdf (accessed 20 July 2007).
75
http://www.thehiddengardens.org.uk (accessed 20 July 2007).

Page 29
communities, in order… to open the gates between different racial and
economic communities. Our imagination of the importance of the centre
proved isolating, their understanding of the value of the edge and border
has proved integrating.’76
This is by no means easy – the problem with segregation and territorialism
is exactly its entrenchment and embedding in daily routines as well as
mental maps. However, services that people will use because of their
practical value have a clear potential – such as markets, but also
specialised provision such as the Castlemilk Youth Complex in Glasgow.

Case Study 5: Castlemilk Youth Complex, Glasgow

Castlemilk is one of the largest housing estates in Scotland, developed
from 1953 as one of four estates on the outskirts of the Glasgow. The
majority of residents are white Scottish people. The youth complex on
the estate works with young people from 12 to 25 who live, work or
attend school in the area. It was founded by a group of young people in
1994 and is still fully youth-led: the board of directors is made up of
twenty-one 16 to 25 year-olds and four advisors, who are often former
board members. Unlike other parts of Glasgow, sectarianism is not a
major problem for Castlemilk. Rather, the youth complex faces two other
divides: strong separation between the different neighbourhoods within
the housing estate and racism towards asylum seekers living in the area.
The centre was originally formed to counter the first of these divisions,
which emerged solely as a result of the physical layout of Castlemilk,
divided as it is into five separate estates. The second division is between
Castlemilkers and a group of asylum seekers who came into the area in
the late 1990s and were initially housed in a series of high-rise towers. At
first, there were severe issues with racism, with the white community
being extremely hostile to the newcomers.
The centre’s strategy is relevant to both issues: primarily, it encourages
the ‘banal encounters’ model of fostering relationships between groups
by participation in common, practical activities.77 The centre’s main
emphasis is on creating opportunities for young people to develop
themselves: personal development, learning new skills and taking part in
sports, theatre and art. Bridge-building between the young people is left
to emerge naturally. For example, anti-racism sessions happen via visual
arts in which the young people produce paintings on the subject rather
than only talk about it.
A key aspect of the Complex is its location within Castlemilk: it is located
in a central part of the estate which none of the five ‘territories’ can
claim as its own. From the start, this was a deliberate move to disturb

76
Richard Sennett, The City as an Open System, Presentation at London School of
Economics, Leverhulme International Symposium 2004 ‘The Resurgent City’
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/resurgentCity/Papers/richardsennett.pdf (accessed 20 July
2007.
77
Ellen Bennett, ‘The secret of community cohesion can be found at the supermarket, says
CRE chairman’ Building Magazine 18 July 2003.

Page 30
the entrenched socio-spatial standoff by a positive intervention: the
Complex is literally an in-between space.
The success of the Complex is partly reflected in the numbers of young
people with whom it works: 450 are registered and 150 use it regularly.
The secret of Castlemilk’s success lies in the fact that it can provide both
real opportunities to young people to learn new skills, and a neutral space
for them to interact – outside the home, school and work. It is flexible
and inclusive, but appeals to its young users as a result of the chance it
offers to take part in exciting and credible activities.
Crucially, the centre also recognises that all these things take time: shifts
in attitudes happen slowly, and often need patient, gradual nurturing. In
the Complex, young people can engage over an extended period of time,
long after leaving school or starting a job or training. By offering the
chance to engage over years rather than weeks, Castlemilk Youth
Complex is making lasting change happen.

Virtual spaces
A sense of belonging in the ‘real world’ can involve a range of different
relationships: family, birthplace, streets, place of worship and
nationality, to name a few. Equally, people often identify as part of a
community of users of a particular ‘virtual’ space. But whilst the early
days of the internet were full of promise of more diverse interactions,
some of this early optimism has not been fulfilled.
First, the digital divide has created a marked separation between the
‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of internet usage – a pattern which deteriorates
even further once considerations of connection speed are brought in.
Second, it increasingly becomes evident that people use the internet in a
markedly territorial way, which mirrors social cleavages in the real world:
in fact, social networking technology like Facebook can virtually
guarantee that you will not have to interact with anyone you don’t know
(or who doesn’t know someone you know). It reinforces, rather than
challenges, existing social stratification – a fact illustrated in the findings
of recent US research which revealed that MySpace and FaceBook use are
rigidly stratified according to levels of educational attainment.78 Thirdly,
even when an online activity does bring together a more diverse group, it
tends to be a relatively functional activity (like playing a game) where a
person’s differences are not only irrelevant, but are also unknown.
These virtual spaces are far from being a panacea for the lack of offline
contact between diverse groups. There are reasons to be optimistic,
however. Campaigns like ‘Save the Internet’ in the US have successfully
capitalised on internet users’ shared concern for the access to the
internet to bring together a diverse group of activists to call for
safeguards of the internet’s equality of access. MySpace and Facebook

78
Danah Boyd, ‘Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace’
Apophenia Blog Essay June 24 2007,
http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html (accessed 20 July 2007).

Page 31
are increasingly politicised spaces, with campaigning organisations
starting to work through existing networks on these sites to build
collective action both online and offline. Increasingly, commentators are
calling for constraints on the behaviour of people commenting on blogs
and creative content (when it comes to racial and religious slurs or
insulting language).
The parallels between virtual space and real, physical public space are
apparent - social stratification, self-selection and exclusion are very real
dangers. However, learning lessons about collective management by users
of a shared space and transferring them between online and offline
contexts creates the potential for these virtual spaces to become hubs for
integration.

Towards spaces of trust and confidence

There are many sites in Britain, existing or new, that have the potential
to act as centres of social interaction between groups. All such places
could inform fresh thinking and future decision-making about public and
communal spaces: about their location, physical lay-out, management
and mix of activities. Evidently, each of the examples is different,
reflecting local circumstances and a particular project’s objectives.
However they also have much in common – and most of all, the fact that
‘use matters’. Without the continuous use of places as part of people’s
daily life, the notion of social interaction falls flat.
Earlier in this chapter, we cited a set of basic factors that condition the
social success of public spaces. Whilst focusing mainly on the design of
formal public spaces, they recognise and underline the first principle of
‘use matters above all.’ However, the exploration in this chapter proves
that paying attention to more informal spaces can teach us more about
the richness of human activities that underpin and help generate
everyday interaction.
Undoubtedly, some of the most poignant outcomes of recent research
focus on the manner in which trust, confidence and use are interrelated.
Too often, our collective relationship to the public domain is marked
exactly by a lack of trust and confidence: fears about the security of
public spaces are at the forefront of public concerns. This becomes
apparent in opinion surveys such as the Annual London Survey, where the
public mentions crime as second in a top ten priority list of things
affecting London’s quality of life, with only housing affordability worrying
people more.79
Such concerns often lead to calls for more CCTV and other ‘hard’ security
measures such as fencing and formal surveillance. However, most good
practice suggests that general principles of good design – such as lighting,
active edges and legibility of walking routes – have more potential to

79
Annual London Survey 2006, Final topline results. Ipsos Mori / Greater London Authority
http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/annual_survey/2006/als-2006-toplines.pdf (accessed 20
July 2007).

Page 32
reduce (the perception of) threat and increase confidence than ‘hard
measures,’ the wider benefits of which are often unproven.80 In fact,
focusing exclusively on security instead of encouraging use and activity in
all its forms might end up having negative consequences.81 Interaction,
trust, participation, sense of ownership and collective efficacy are closely
linked to the use of space as a primary positive factor, making or breaking
a neighbourhood’s resilience in the face of risk and enabling pathways of
recovery.
The categories of space and the examples cited in this chapter all present
opportunities for positive interactions ranging from ‘everyday and banal’
encounters to celebratory and highly participative interaction. Hence,
whilst spontaneous and unplanned encounters between people from
different cultures and communities remain unpredictable, it is possible
for cities and for actors within cities to help create the conditions that
would sustain this.
The next chapter will draw out a number of key lessons relating to the
physical design and management of public spaces, the location of public
and community services, institutional arrangements in different
organisations, public space activation and co-governance and the
encouragement of confidence and trust for cross-cultural projects.

80
Paul Michael, Cozens Greg Saville and David Hillier, ‘Crime prevention through
environmental design (CPTED): a review and modern bibliography’ Property Management,
Volume 23 Number 5 2005 pp. 328-356,
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/ViewContentServlet?Filename=Published/EmeraldFul
lTextArticle/Articles/1130230502.html#b169 (accessed 20 July 2007); CABEspace,
Preventing Antisocial Behaviour in Public Spaces (London: CABEspace 2007; Assessing
the Impact of CCTV, Home Office Research Study 292, 2005.
81
Ken Worpole and Katharine Knox, The Social Value of Public Spaces (York: JRF, 2007).

Page 33
Chapter 3: Getting it right: from spaces of potential to places of
interaction

The lessons from the research can be summarised in four main

recommendations for practitioners and policymakers in the future:

1) be flexible in the use of space, understand the grain of people’s

everyday lives and reflect it in the design of public space;
2) aim to create the setting for ‘trusted’ spaces, where people feel
secure to take part in unfamiliar interactions;
3) foster positive interactions but don’t promote them: take an
indirect approach to changing behaviour;
4) embrace creativity and innovation in finding new and imaginative
uses for spaces that will transform interactions between people.

1. Be flexible in the use of space and go with the grain of people’s

everyday lives
People congregate in certain spaces by necessity, in the pursuit of
everyday needs, habits and hobbies. It is the potential of these everyday
spaces that needs to be harnessed to make such daily movements and
interactions enjoyable and stimulating. Relatively low-budget, easy to
introduce designs can change existing physical and social conditions and
deliver clear benefits to different user groups. Any intervention needs to
be based on close engagement with locally specific situations: from
improving the physical conditions at the school gate or bus stop to
widening pavements or adjusting a market’s management regime,
interventions need to take small steps that start with people’s existing
behaviour and preferences.
One person interviewed for the good practice review of cross-community
work in Northern Ireland remarked, ‘We use a community development
strategy which gets people to look at projects on both sides, and see how
they can share the good practice and get things done. The issues are
things like unemployment, the Peace Line itself, discrimination and that
type of thing.’82 Dealing with issues that made people’s daily lives
difficult gave the impetus for people to overcome major reservations
about working with members of another community with whom relations
were almost non-existent.
Working on these issues also means targeting a level of change in which
people can experience real success. The chance to see that it is possible
to shift entrenched behaviours within an area or to make practical
changes that have a big impact on people’s lives is essential. It will not
necessarily stem from aiming to tackle the big issues from the start, but
instead by making first steps. Herein lays the power of projects such as
the environmental improvements generated by Groundwork trusts.
Additionally, aiming for real community ownership of a project is

82
John Lampen, ‘Building the Peace - Good Practice in Community Relations Work in
Northern Ireland’ (Belfast: Community Relations Council, 1995) p 20.

Page 34
invaluable in creating lasting support for the initiative, as well as to build
capacity that means that the effect of the project will last beyond the
lifetime of the initial concern.
It is important to engage with the mainstream, trusted individuals who
lead communities, from within places of worship, community centres or
local businesses. These are the people who can act as hubs for
transmitting ideas across different groups, and gain acceptance from the
more sceptical informal networks (and individuals). Very often, voluntary
and community groups will already exist and be part of these informal
networks. Identifying these in each of the groups and looking to these as
a starting point is critical.83

2. Aim to create the setting for ‘trusted’ spaces, where people feel
secure to take part in unfamiliar interactions
Feeling safe and secure in a space is a vital precursor to fostering trust
and encouraging new uses. In the enthusiasm for building sophisticated
responses to community tension, it can be easy to lose site of the basics.
The state of repair of community surroundings, such as street-cleaning
and responsiveness to graffiti and vandalism, however, remains central to
people’s relationships with public space and must sit at the heart of new
interventions. Signs of crime and vandalism communicate disrespect and
lack of care for residents; until these are tackled, interventions aimed at
more sophisticated integration goals will have only limited success. There
is ample empirical evidence on the relationship of such ‘basic’ physical
factors with safety and perceptions of safety as well as on wider factors
of individual and community well-being.84
Projects to tackle discrimination or alienation between different ethnic
groups must not assume a single, bipolar model of racism. In many cases
the primary and most corrosive segregation will occur between white and
one or several ethnic minority groups, but there may also be tensions
between different ethnic minorities, or within a group that share the
same ethnic background but arrived in the UK at different times, or in
different circumstances. Perceived competition over scarce resources
often triggers such tensions, reinforcing the importance of focusing on
basic parameters of ‘urban plenitude’ in public services, maintenance of
public space, and responsiveness to all users.
A further important step in building trust around spaces is to be prepared
to have difficult conversations about what the space should be for, and
how people’s past experiences shape their aspirations for the space now.
Argument and conflict are a part of building understanding across cultures
and institutions. Local practitioners and policymakers need to embrace

83
Dhara Vyas, ‘How voluntary and community organisations can help transform the local
relationships’, NCVO, 2006, http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/policy/index.asp?id=3298 (accessed
June 2007; Paul Skidmore, Kirsten Bound and Hannah Lownsbrough, Community
participation: Who benefits? (York: JRF, 2006).
84
David Halpern, More than Bricks and Mortar? Mental Health and the Built Environment
(London: Taylor & Francis, 1995); Martin Innes and Vanessa Jones, Neighbourhood security
and urban change: Risk, resilience and recovery (York: JRF, 2006).

Page 35
this often uncomfortable truth. Concentrating too much on cohesion and
on the avoidance of conflict can stifle progressive moves and merely
sustain the status quo. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation makes this point
in the report Cultural Diversity in Britain. Turning a blind eye to building
pressures within communities has rarely ended well; instead,
policymakers should be prepared to deal with disagreement and conflict,
and willing to accept a plurality of views.85

3. Foster positive interactions but don’t promote them: take an

indirect approach to changing behaviour
Ethnic and religious difference is a reality in the UK, sustained within
interest-based, virtual and spatial communities. It is therefore generally
unproductive to ask people to leave difference at the door of the public
realm – expression of distinctiveness can be a valuable source of pride
and confidence, dialogue and understanding. While acknowledging the
reality of interest-based communities, we ought to provide continuous
support for the emergence of new communities or their continuous
adaptation, instead of aiming for the reinforcement and entrenchment of
established communities. Through physical or activity-based
interventions, local communities can be connected, can open up and
friendships can be established: the establishment of a joint vegetable
gardening club, collective recycling, participation in neighbourhood radio
or television channels and exchanges between institutions or groups such
as schools and theatres, can lead to the sharing of concern and the
creation of new networks of social capital.

4. Embrace creativity and innovation in finding new and imaginative

uses for spaces that will transform interactions between people
There is no need to focus exclusively on conventional definitions of what
amounts to public space. Ambiguous and uncertain spaces can open up
the process of defining use and access by taking the debate away from
the ‘usual suspects’, and towards newer and less frequent users of public
spaces. Whenever policymakers, designers and architects remain focused
only on ‘high-spec, high-design’ places, this will come at the cost of
failing to identify, investigate and harness the alternative opportunities
posed by new kinds of both publics and spaces that emerge every day.
There is no reason why these spaces – community-led, or commercial, but
perceived as public by many who use them – should not represent critical
contact points for building relationships between separate groups.
Lastly, it is crucial to look beyond the traditional ‘centres’ of cities and
communities in seeking spaces for fresh interactions. Bridging points and
border zones are key levers for change and tackling tensions. Hence,
policy and design should take these ‘spaces of uncertainty’ seriously, and

85
Phil Wood, Charles Landry and Jude Bloomfield, Cultural Diversity in Britain A toolkit for
cross-cultural co-operation (York: JRF / Comedia 2006),
http://www.jrf.org.uk/bookshop/eBooks/1922-cultural-diversity-Britain.pdf (accessed 20 July
2007).

Page 36
focus its attention in between communities, in seemingly marginal,
neutral and ‘third’ spaces. The hearts of communities can be places for
expression of particular identities, but their borders should be places
where many different identities can come together in a positive way.

Page 37
About the contributors

Nick Johnson has been the Director of Policy and Public Sector for the
Commission for Racial Equality since June 2004. He has led the
development of the CRE’s policy agenda and is a leading commentator on
issues of integration, equality and identity, regularly writing and speaking
on these issues. He recently edited Britishness – towards a progressive
citizenship for the Smith Institute and has contributed to a number of
books.
At the CRE, he leads the Commission’s engagement with the public
sector, aiming to see race equality and integration mainstreamed into the
delivery of public services and the development of public policy.
Prior to joining the CRE, he was a consultant in the public sector with
PricewaterhouseCoopers, specialising in working with local government on
the improvement agenda. Before that, he was at the Association of
London Government, latterly as Head of their Programme Office,
responsible for corporate and strategic policy.
He has also worked as a political consultant and researcher and is
currently working on a book on the political legacy of Senator Robert F
Kennedy. He sits on the Advisory Board of the Institute of Community
Cohesion and is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts.

Hannah Lownsbrough Hannah Lownsbrough is a Demos Associate and

Senior Political Analyst at Crisis Action, an international, non-profit
organisation which aims to help avert conflicts, prevent human rights
abuses and ensure governments fulfil their obligations to protect civilians.
She was a researcher at Demos from autumn 2003 to June 2007, during
which time she worked on a wide range of projects. She wrote Change
Within, a report in partnership with the Barrow Cadbury Trust, looking at
the role played by black and minority ethnic community organisations.
She also co-authored Bringing it Home, a pamphlet on community-led
approaches to counter-terrorism, which investigates approaches to
tackling the threat of violent extremism that are rooted within Muslim
communities. With the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit and Manchester City
Council, she has investigated the potential of a systems thinking
methodology for renewing local government policies aimed at reducing
anti-social behaviour amongst young people.
In addition to her roles at Demos and Crisis Action, Hannah is also chair of
trustees at Chelsea Youth Club and Flashpoint Play Centre, a community
organisation based on an estate in central London. She is also a trustee
of Crisis, the national charity for single homeless people.

Joost Beunderman is a researcher in the Demos Cities Programme and is

freelance consultant with Urhahn Urban Design, an Amsterdam-based
practice. At Demos, Joost is involved in a wide range of urban policy
projects. He currently leads the Children Make Places project which
investigates ways to increase children’s free movement and play

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opportunities in public space across the UK; the pamphlet belonging to
this project is due to be published in September 2007.
He co-edited BCN-LDN 2020, a collection of essays published jointly by
Demos and the Barcelona think tank Fundació Ramon Trias Fargas, which
provides critical reflections on the ‘resurgent city’ discourse that we hear
from both cities, exploring directions for future urban politics on public
space, migration and governance.
He is also part of a multi-disciplinary team that is currently developing a
Public Ream Strategy for the Mayor of London, informing London’s public
space policies up to 2025. For Urhahn Urban Design, Joost has been
working on several research studies looking at the potential public realm
benefits of high-density housing and town centre regeneration.

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