Immigrants, Communities and Urban Planning English version

Immigrant settlement has never been a static process. Its multifarious patterns keep shaping our communities. Urban planning, as a profession to regulate urban development, should be more aware of the spatial manifestation of immigrant communities and their activities on urban landscapes, and respond to the changes in a more proactive way. In Canadian planning literature, how to manage multicultural issues in cities has drawn increasing attention in recent years. It offers a wide spectrum of focuses, ranging from municipal organizational and legislative responses to immigrant settlement in a broader sense, to human rights and citizenship arguments embedded in planning policies and programs, and to empirical studies of such issues as housing, ethnic retail, places of worship, and neighbourhood design. However, despite the on-going debates regarding immigrant settlement and multicultural planning, there is still no fixed solution that can be drawn upon in response to the increasing ethno-cultural diversity of our society. The current status of multicultural planning is still operating on a case-by-case basis where planners play a reactive role. This is attributable to both the complex nature of immigrant settlement and the unreadiness of the planning system to deal with the challenge. To provide a pluralistic vision for a multicultural city and its people largely depends on whether planning legitimacy is well equipped with the diversity-oriented focus, whether planning practitioners are sensitive to the multicultural reality, and whether the policymaking and implementation process is flexible and culturally respectful.