Writing Multiculturalism? Planning for Culturally Different Identities in the City of Birmingham

Abstract

This article presents a case study of a multicultural planning epistemology at work in the everyday landscape of a city. It draws on insights in cultural geography and the planning archive on Birmingham's Chinese Quarter, to show that the epistemology in play weaves together claims of a factual, authentic multiculturalism based on particular presences with an implicit planning imaginary of cultural identity. It then demonstrates that the planning imaginary in question is structured like a text with a signifying system containing mimetic and disseminative properties. The article concludes by proposing a number of implications from the case study for the planning of Birmingham's multicultural future.

When postmodern architectural ‘historicism’ borrows architectural idioms from far-flung periods without any regard for idiomatic coherence or reproduction of appropriate context, this … can be seen as a foregrounding of radical citationality, of the suggestion that the ‘aura’ of the original cannot be structurally privileged. (Spivak, 1999, p. 331)

Keywords:

• Birmingham
• multiculturalism
• planning imaginary
• cultural identity
• Chinese Quarter
• Highbury

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Yasminah Beebeejaun, Robert Rogerson and three anonymous referees for their constructive comments on the manuscript, to George Yule for producing the map, and to Cheryl McEwan and David Parker for helping to make sense of the deconstructive line of argument followed in the article. The usual disclaimers apply.

Notes

 1. Throughout the 1990s Birmingham's planners began to reflect upon the limitations of the regeneration projects of the previous decades (Sandercock, 2003). Under fire from academics and politicians alike, Birmingham's flagship projects were shown up for failing to address social exclusion (Loftman & Nevin, 1996). It is in this context that the conference Highbury 3 was organised. Made up of planners, politicians, voluntary sector workers, local business people, academics and representatives from Birmingham's ethnic minority communities, the conference featured a number of discussions that sought to establish the ways in which Birmingham could compete in a global economy whilst sharing prosperity with the city's different communities.

 2. During the 1980s there was a growing concern over the economic potential and environmental quality of Birmingham's central area. Birmingham's modernist developments, such as the Bull Ring, the Sentinel Towers and the Queensway, were dismissed as lacking “architectural distinction” (Birmingham City Council Planning & Architecture Department, 1996). The Queensway was said to be a magnet for noise and atmospheric pollution and its subways were criticised for being “drab and inhuman”. To counter these claims and to revitalise a city hit by deindustrialisation the City Centre Strategy (Birmingham City Council, Department of Planning and Architecture, 1987) identified a number of key themes and recommendations for the planning policies for the Central Area that were established within the City's adopted Birmingham Plan (1993).

 3. The Chinese/Markets Quarter: Planning and Urban Design Framework (Birmingham City Council, Planning and Architecture, 1996) provided supplementary planning guidance for the period of 1996 to 2006.

 4. Birmingham has long had a Chinese population, yet according to the 1991 Census, the Ward where the Chinese Quarter sits contains a diverse population of which only 0.6 per cent is Chinese.

 5. See Letter from James McBride of Alexander Stevens & Company to the City Planning Officer, 22 March 1983.

 6. The investment company for the China Court, Anglo Oriental Properties, won an Urban Development Grant of £220 000 in 1990 (Birmingham Post, 23 November 1988; Development and Investment service, Economic Development Department Memorandum, 31 July 1995).

 7. This reference refers to the file name for China Court

 8. See Interview Record between James & Lister Lea with the Economic Development Unit, 18 April 1985.

 9. Avatar Ltd was formed in 1987 as a joint venture between London 7 Edinburgh Trust Plc and Balfour Beatty Ltd to specialise in inner city redevelopment (Birmingham Post, 14 September 1990).

10. The Inner Cities Minister announced that Avatar Ltd would receive the grant towards the Arcadian scheme on the 13 December 1989 (Birmingham Evening Mail, 13 December 1989). He claimed: “This area of the city is experiencing a transformation. This latest scheme will complement other planned developments nearby—such as China Court, which my department is also helping through grant aid” (David Hunt, MP, cited in Birmingham Post, 15 December 1989).