The strategic uses of race to legitimize ‘social mix’ urban redevelopment

Governing urban diversity through myths of national sameness – a comparative analysis of Denmark and Sweden

“…Research has highlighted how “race” is a social construction that structures local and global power relations and how racialisation in urban contexts refers to discrimination and differentiation of the housing market according to ascribed racial categories (Molina, 2008) and to the use of racial discourses in defining and legitimising social and spatial changes (Mele, 2019). Racialisation thus constitutes a strategy to colonize urban space and legitimise intervention in the name of diversity and social mix (Mele, 2019; Kipfer and Petrunia, 2009). However, processes of othering also imply selfing (Baumann and Gringrich, 2004).…”

Racial urbanities: towards a global cartography

“…While much of these mobilization are discursively linked to the idea of the nation, cities display a different but also an inter-related dynamic in this. In particular, gentrification of previously 'run down' inner cities and competition over housing has become a mechanism through which subtle logics of racism are played out through the market as well as the trope of urban regeneration, as Mele (2017) shows in his essay; in addition, both Marr (2017) and Gressgård (2017) point to the ways in which urban planning in both conventional and securitized forms contributes to this. As with analyses of the rise of the black middle class (Pattillo, 2007) and of multicultural cities (Keith, 2005), these are more than matters of a White vs. Black dualism, even while a 'white racial framing' (Elias & Feagin, 2016) undergirds it.…”

“…Like the examples mentioned above, the papers collected here are a further step towards building the global cartography of racial urbanities. This issue covers not only cities in Europe (Gressgård, 2017) and North America (Mele, 2017;Trujillo-Pagán, 2018;Byfield, 2018), but also Africa (Marr, 2017;Trujillo-Pagán, 2018), Latin America (Guimarães, 2017) as well as the Middle East (Trujillo-Pagán, 2018). These studies provide a rich range of examples and analyses that we hope will generate further debate and research on racial urbanities.…”

“…This essentially violent order of things in disguise ends up becoming part of everyday life, a condition which suggests that -if applied to deemed dangerous racialized youth -death politics does not necessarily occur in emergency and exceptional situations, as Mbembe (2003) instead suggests. Drawing on an analysis of the redevelopment of Regent Park in Toronto, Canada, Mele (2017) shows the ways in which white elites such as planners and real estate CEOs ignore race as a structuring force of social injustice while referring to the polite discourse of social-class mixing, in order to make the urban poor 'learn' from middle-class habits. The related processes of individualization and moralization of poverty function through what the author calls 'racial exemplar', i.e.…”

Mythical encounters: challenging racism in the diverse city

“…McDonald (2007) for example points out how municipal policies that prohibit questions about immigration status directly challenge the racism of the Canadian state. In his analysis of Toronto's Regent Park public housing redevelopment, Mele (2019) shows how urban planning and development policy produce, sustain and protect a distinctly urban neoliberalism, upheld by racialisation and selective applications of diversity aimed at redeeming the urban poor. Keith (2002) argues that in addition to seeking out the racialized images and imaginaries that inform multiple and shifting descriptions of the city, we must interrogate how race is simultaneously evoked and erased through local state apparatuses to reinforce these descriptions.…”