Urban Planning for the Integration of Refugees: The Importance of Local Factors

Abstract

Housing location is one of several characteristics that play a significant role in the future integration of asylum-seekers. Many of these characteristics or institutional arrangements are spatialized aspects relevant to urban planning. Drawing on experiences from fieldwork in Göttingen, a mid-sized city in the German Federal state of Lower-Saxony 2016–2018, this article demonstrates the local challenges, strategies and their resulting institutional arrangements on various aspects of asylum-seekers’ lives. It discusses the influence of those arrangements on the development of their social circles, and on their access to different resources, influencing their participation in and interaction with the social and urban life of their host cities; thereby influencing their integration processes. To do so, the article addresses local factors that are significant for urban planners to include into an integration plan. It observes the role urban planning can play in preventing aspects of segregation in the various life domains of refugees and in providing urban contexts that facilitate integration in European cities. The first assumption of this article is that integration, refugees’ attitudes towards it, and an urban context that can facilitate it start from day one of the arrival of new comers in their host city/town. The second assumption is that integration happens on the local level of the city, and more specifically on the level of the host neighborhood.

Altruistic Giving Toward Refugees: Identifying Factors That Increase Citizens' Willingness to Help

“…This seems to be particularly important since positive (negative) contact facilitates (inhibits) positive refugee-receiving community relations (Kotzur et al, 2018 ; Lutterbach and Beelmann, 2020 ) as would be expected from intergroup contact theory (Allport, 1954 ; Pettigrew, 1998 ). In line with our results, Seethaler-Wari ( 2018 ) point out the importance of local factors in urban planning assuming that refugee integration happens on the local level of the city and the neighborhood. Consequently, policy approaches that avoid the creation of marginalized communities (e.g., refugee camps outside the city) and prioritize the dispersion of refugees (e.g., quota systems) might represent future-oriented approaches to foster integration through increased contact.…”

Can community involvement policies mitigate NIMBYism and local opposition to asylum seeker centres?

“…The local government chose to locate an ASC in this neighbourhood because the facility, an unused office building, provided a viable and large enough site in the city to accommodate the high numbers of asylum seekers arriving in 2015 and 2016. This was typical of siting strategies seen in other European countries, where governments made pragmatic decisions about the location of ASCs based on the ability to quickly convert facilities like sports halls, schools and factories (Seethaler-Wari, 2018).…”

Unfolding intersecting forms of socio‐spatial exclusion: Accommodation centres at the height of the “refugee reception crisis” in Germany

“…Remote physical locations of camps/accommodation centres have been identified as an influential factor in fostering spatial exclusion of forced migrants (Göler, 2020; Kreichauf, 2018; Lumpey‐Sapanski, 2022; Szczepanikova, 2013), which hinder chances for social interaction. In our sample, none of the three accommodation centres were located in the city centre but their different locations, particularly their social embeddedness in direct surroundings and the socio‐economic and political background of its residents, offered different degrees of social exclusion (see also Seethaler‐Wari, 2018 on this).…”