Focusing especially on Britain’s planning history, Beebeejaun draws on postcolonial scholars like Gurminder Bhambra and Paul Gilroy to highlight how racist histories of planning are reflected in current lived experiences, but also how contemporary manifestations of diversity may mask these histories.
The work force needed for post war reconstruction incentivized an unprecedented increase in migrant labor across Europe. In Britain, for example, this was facilitated by the British Commonwealth Act of 1948, which granted a unified citizenship for people all across the Commonwealth (although this was quite soon tightened and repealed by other acts), and in Germany by a guestworker program. However, Beebeejaun notes how Europe has been home to diverse ethnic minority groups long before this.
Beebeejaun unpacks ‘everyday diversity’, arguing that the concept needs historical revision. In major urban centers such as London, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam, difference is often treated as an ‘unremarkable and navigable feature of urban life.’ However, proximity does not erase segregation or othering. She asks who represents Europe, and where: the snapshot of a classroom or a city street versus the one of the European Parliament or Commission. A quick Google search of the current commissioners illustrates the contrast. Ethnic minority representation in the European Parliament fell after Britain left the EU, she notes. Ironically, Britain’s struggle to let go of its imperial past was present in the rhetoric around Brexit1.
These tensions surface in the places where people live, work, and learn. Urban space is always a contested avenue, which becomes increasingly unsafe long before overt racism gains foot in (political) rhetoric. Beebeejaun draws examples of the recent anti-immigrant protests in Epping, UK, opposing the housing of refugees in hotels. The protestors’ racist views are supported by Epping council, which has taken the hotel to court, arguing on planning grounds that asylum centers should not be put next to schools2. Beebeejaun points out how a similar rhetoric where “asylum seekers shouldn’t live together, but not in the community either”, was used for migrant workers in the post-war period. She highlights how Britain’s unfinished post-war reconstruction created a category of poorer quality housing, so-called “twilight zones”, in which (often racialized) migrant workers were forced to live, largely due to fewer rights to state housing and certain residency requirements.
Enter the 1960s England, where people of color were framed as a “planning problem” and blamed for urban decline. Beebeejaun explains how efforts were made by urban planners to disperse Ugandan-British, and Asian minority groups. Moreover, ethnic minorities were framed as “hard to reach”, and thus their interests could not be advocated for. In addition to discriminatory planning practices, ethnic minority neighborhoods especially in London faced both disproportionate police presence and hate crimes, the latter exemplified by the Unity Bookshop arson attack in 19733 or the racially motivated murder of Altab Ali in 19784.
An infamous contemporary example of racist planning in Europe would be the Danish “ghetto law” (later changed to “parallel societies law”) from 2018, where neighborhoods with over 50 % “non-western” residents are subject to a law that allows the government to sell and demolish apartment blocks. It also requires the public housing association to cut social housing by 40 % if, in addition to an area having a majority immigrant population for five years, socioeconomic conditions are poor. A troubling classification became even more absurd as an advocate general from the European Court of Justice found out that the classification of “non-western” was based on ethnicity. The case is currently being processed in the ECJ. If the court agrees with the advocate general, the parallel societies law could be found to violate EU law5.
Regarding resistance to dogmatic planning, Beebeejaun highlights how citizen- and community-led urban planning initiatives and efforts to redefine urban space have simultaneously existed. In England and Wales, this is exemplified by the pamphlet A Squatter's Handbook, originally written by Olive Morris in 1976, providing resources and advice for people facing homelessness and housing precarity. The London-based Advisory Service for Squatters has been revising the pamphlet since, with its now 15th edition available. In terms of literature on race and space, Beebeejaun guides the audience to, among others, Second Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta, In the Wake of Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe, as well as Demonic Grounds by Katherine Mckittrick. Beebeejaun also makes the case that contemporary resistance and efforts at reclaiming urban space can be reflected in discourse around removing statues of historical figures, as well as in artworks like Guilt of Cain by Michael Visocchi & Lemn Sissay.
The current rise of the far right also happens on the streets – and is unlikely restricted to Finland’s independence day march. We must hence critically ask where the responsibility of urban dwellers’ safety lies, in what legacies discrimination is embedded, and how we can center multiple forms of needs, voices, and advocacy in urban planning. As illuminated by Beebeejaun, the past is often recreated in ways that diversity and representation alone do not untangle.
You can read more about Beebeejaun’s work at
References:
- Saunders, R. (2020). Brexit and Empire: ‘Global Britain’ and the myth of imperial nostalgia. The Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History, 48(6), 1140–1174.
- Adams, L. (2025, September 16). Epping council given date for The Bell Hotel legal challenge.
- Today in London’s racist history, 1973: Black Panther Unity bookshop destroyed by arson attack, Brixton . (2021, April 21). LONDON RADICAL HISTORIES.
- Bright, C. N. a. S. (2016, May 3). Altab Ali: The racist murder that mobilised the East End. BBC News.
- Bryant, M. (2025, February 13). Top EU court adviser finds Denmark’s ‘ghetto law’ is direct discrimination. The Guardian.