Ethnicity and Public Space in the City: Ethnic Precincts in Sydney

Abstract

Ethnic precincts demonstrate how cultural diversity shapes public spaces. They are clusters of ethnic entrepreneurs who line the precinct streets selling food, goods or services in areas designated as ethnic precincts by local government officials who fund makeovers of public spaces to display ethnic iconography and symbolism to promote the area based on the 'ethnic' experience. Ethnic precincts are a key site of production and consumption of the ethnic economy, a commodification of place where the symbolic economy of space is constructed on representations of ethnicity and 'immigrantness'. To explore how ethnic diversity shapes public space we present findings of recent fieldwork in four Sydney precincts. We examine the complex relationship between immigrant entrepreneurs, local government and ethnic community representatives in shaping the emergence and development of ethnic precincts and demonstrate how perceptions of the authenticity of ethnic precincts vary according to whether customers are 'co-ethnic', 'co-cultural' or 'others'.

Policy Narratives versus Everyday Geographies: Perceptions of Changing Local Space in Melbourne's Diverse North

“…In comparing two Australian suburban localities which are differently affected by immigration and neoliberal restructuring, we hope to contribute to the body of work framed by scholars such as Dunn (; ), Collins and Jordan (), and Collins and Kunz (), who have sought to understand how “ethnic” spaces in Australia (specifically Sydney) are discursively constructed and how they are undergoing change. Much of this work has focused on the positioning of established precincts as tourism products, exploring critical dimensions of the interface of immigration, cultural diversity and the “supply side” of ethnic tourism (Collins and Jordan ), and how the commodification of ethnic diversity shapes public space (Collins and Kunz ). However, the focus on immigrant entrepreneurs and local authorities in this work has left the “everyday” perspectives of residents underexplored.…”

“…Ethnocultural diversity shapes place and space in various ways in different localities (Collins and Kunz 2009;Katz et al 2010;Zukin 1995), and immigrants are important urban actors in understanding how neoliberal restructuring shapes everyday urban sociospatiality (Glick Schiller and Ç aglar 2009;. In the postindustrial context, government, media, and academic representations of culturally diverse places have become 70 ever more complex and often embedded within normative assumptions about the "value" of diversity.…”

“…As Godfrey (2004) writes of the Latino neighborhoods of San Francisco, it is the "ethnic charm" of these localities that serves as a specific catalyst for their gentrification, attracting middle class "yuppie" home-buyers and consumers. There has been a significant amount of work, in Australia and elsewhere, on the changing geographies, cultures, and economies of well-established ethnic precincts (see, for example, Anderson 1991;Collins and Jordan 2009;Collins and Kunz 2009;Pang and Rath 2007). In line with the neoliberal logics pervading policies on immigration and diversity, over the last 30-40 years, these commercialized "hubs" of cosmopolitan consumption, like Sydney and Melbourne's Chinatowns, have become symbols of the economic value of Australian multiculturalism (Anderson 1990).…”

‘In the beginning all is chaos …’: Roaming the Dystopic Realm in Australian Multiculturalism

“…This is important for an understanding of Chinatowns in Australia because it is the clustering of Chinese restaurants and other retail and professional services in the historic downtown Chinatown precinct, rather than contemporary suburb-resident Chinese populations, that is the most critical to the emergence of an ethnic precinct like Chinatown. In 2007, 89 per cent of the businesses in Chinatown were Chinese-owned (Collins and Kunz, 2009). Changes in the regional and class background of Sydney's Chinese immigrants alter the nature of the restaurants in Chinatown.…”

“…In Cabramatta, 80 per cent of all enterprises were owned by Vietnamese immigrants and a further 10 per cent by Chinese. In Auburn, 205 enterprises (78 per cent) were owned by Turkish immigrant entrepreneurs (Collins and Kunz, 2009). The social transformation of Australian suburbs is thus shaped by changing patterns of immigrant settlement and, more importantly, of clustering of immigrant entrepreneurs.…”