The Planning Role in Stretching the City: A Tale of Two London Neighbourhoods (SpringerBriefs in Geography)

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. Introduction References Contents Part I How Do Latent Orders Determine Residential Dynamics in London? 1 The Study of Whitechapel’s Terrain of Integration References 2 How Do Housing Strategies Stretch Housing Positions? 2.1 The Horizontal Axis 2.2 The Vertical Axis 2.3 The Spatial Encounter Between the Horizontal and Vertical Axes References Part II Planning for Undocumented Communities 3 How Have Undocumented Residents in Whitechapel Managed Their Housing Decisions? References 4 Approaches to Social-Residential Relations: ‘Bonding’, ‘Friends’, and Methods to Examine Interresidential Relations References 5 Managing Residential Selections in the Context of Illegality References 6 Ethnicity as a Bridge Between Stated and Revealed Residential Preferences References 7 Residential Solutions of the Undocumented Population References 8 The Effect of Different Compositions of Social Ties on Residential Selections References 9 “Planning” Visual Dominance in Whitechapel’s Absorption Neighbourhood? References Part III Planning Integration? 10 “Nations Are in Conflict, Neighbours Are not”: The Case Study of the Iranian and the Israeli Communities of West Finchley 10.1 What Are the ‘Push and Pull’ Factors to Promote Shared Iranian and Israeli Communities? References 11 Micro-Integration Analysis 11.1 The Research Area of WFNP References 12 Residential Choice of the Iranian and the Israeli Communities 12.1 Intra- and Intergroups Residential Preferences 12.2 The Micro-11th SDG Goal: The Power of Soft Residential Boundaries in Creating an Inclusive, Safe Diverse Urban Area References Discussion and Conclusion