Navigating the Sea of Diversity - Multicultural Place-Making in Sydney

Abstract

Historically, most multicultural exchanges have taken place across recognised geographic borders.However postmodern multiculturalism, largely resulting from ethnically diverse migration to advanced (postiindustrialised countries, has led to new modes of multicultural contact.For many people, multicultural exchanges must now be negotiated in their everyday lives, often in their neighbourhoods and home, as well as in the public domain.Undertaken by an interdisciplinary team of built environment design and planning academics, this paper explores ways of documenting and theorising the activities of 'everyday' built environment professionals in Australia.It focuses on those who are attempting to sensitively and effectively design for such encounters in the context of contemporary multicultural urbanism.Earlier studies of Australian multiculturalism in the built environment have typically followed international trends in focusing on ghetto-like places; that is, ethnically distinct, relatively segregated areas such as Melbourne's Chinatown or the Vietnamese precinct in Sydney's Cabramatta.This paper avoids this focus on overt ethnic stereotyping by focusing on places that may be visually unremarkable but are culturally heterogeneous in their production and habitation.It documents innovative strategies for multicultural negotiation developed by landscape design and planning professionals working for local government in the low-income, ethnically diverse suburbs of south west Sydney.The success of these strategies suggests that the everyday negotiations of design professionals offer a valuable site for study of the impact of cultural diversity on the evolution of the built environment.