The Planning Role in Stretching the City - A Tale of Two London Neighbourhoods

This research aims to uncover new insights into minority housing strategies and their impact on densely populated urban areas. The study assumes that as space becomes scarce, inter and intra groups interactions in the urban space motivate people to maximize the utility of the resources at their disposal. This 'stretch' of the built environment provides them with critical selective advantages and a sense of security and belonging. 

Based on two neighbourhoods in London, it contributes to our understanding of housing decisions in the context of illegality and shows the capacity of a given urban form for adaptation: It creates a new semi-private/public space, partly segregated yet deeply integrated; a sphere that, on the one hand, enables traditional 'nested' places and, on the other, a fertile environment for integration. This manuscript contributes two new ideas to the knowledge base of residential selections and the geography of opportunities. The first is a detailed analysis of a hyper-segregation/integration pattern resulting from complementary residential strategies operating at the individual unit level. The second is multidimensional stretching, a bottom-up initiation that allows individuals to maximize resources through territorial and spatial practices.

 

Shlomit Flint Ashery is an architect, planner, and the head of Bar Ilan University's urban planning programme. Her research interests focus on social and cultural geography; urban development; planning theory, implementation, policy and practice and geodesign. Dr Flint Ashery's term 'micro segregation' has attracted much academic attention. Springer published her previous two books in the Urban Book Series.