Geography Vol 98 Part 1 Spring 2013 © Geography 2013

Living with
difference:
proximity and
encounter in
urban life

Living with otherness in the 1970s and 1980s, to being

celebrated as the hallmark of cosmopolitanism in
the 21st century. It then goes onto question whether

difference: proximity and urban encounters in the context of

contemporary super mobility and super diversity
represent a new form of urban citizenship. In doing

proximity and so, the article challenges the assumptions of some

cosmopolitan writing that contact with difference
necessarily translates into respect for difference,

encounter in and reflects on potential ways that such progressive

social transformation might be achieved.

urban life Introduction

Gill Valentine
ABSTRACT: Difference is a hallmark of cities. The
size and density of urban populations means they
are sites of proximity where all sorts of people are
brought together. This issue of diversity and
juxtaposition has been at the heart of geographical
attempts to understand urban life. This article traces
the way ‘difference’ has been understood by
geographers from being synonymous with fear of
At the beginning of the 20th century a group of
scholars – most famously Robert Park, Ernest
Burgess and Roderick McKenzie – carried out
detailed studies of where different kinds of people
lived in the city. They became known as The
Chicago School of Human Ecology because they
used an analogy with plant communities to
interpret the residential patterns of Chicago and to
develop a theory of how ‘natural communities’
emerge in cities. This work was very influential in
geography in the 1970s and led to the
development of techniques to map segregation
within cities on the basis of ethnicity and class

4
Photos: © Bryan Ledgard
© Geography 2013
(e.g. Peach, 1975). However, this work was heavily
criticised by radical geographers and black political
activists (see Jackson, 1987) for its narrow
empiricism and the assumptions made about ‘race’
(i.e. that it was an essential category), which are
now out of kilter with contemporary understandings
of identity and ‘difference’.
In the 1980s, influenced by understandings of
‘race’ as a social construction rather than a
‘natural’ difference, geographers sought to explain
and challenge such patterns of inequality in cities
as products of structural processes – in particular
focusing on the role of the housing market in
shaping urban space and producing racial
segregation (e.g. Smith, 1987; Anderson, 1991). In
the USA and to a lesser extent the UK attention
also focused on the spatial concentration of the
underclass (those on the bottom rung of the social
ladder whose experiences are characterised by
intergenerational poverty, welfare dependency and
unemployment/unstable employment) in inner-city
‘ghettos’.
During this period, cities in the affluent West were
generally in decline – being characterised by
deindustrialisation and structural unemployment.
The juxtaposition of difference in this context of
social polarisation led to tension and conflict.
Trapped in poverty with little access to employment
or wider opportunities some marginalised groups,
with little stake in society, turned to crime, drug
dealing and violence as a way of earning a living as
well as self and social respect. For some young
unemployed white males (who had the lost their
relatively privileged status as working-class men)
anger at their structural circumstances was
displaced by blaming scapegoats such as minority
ethnic groups, lesbians or gay men (Fine et al.,
1997). As such, during this period ‘difference’ was
synonymous with fear of otherness (Valentine,
1989; Davis, 1990) with (at different times and in
different spaces) particular groups becoming
demonised as ‘dangerous others’ including young
people, minority ethnic groups, homeless people,
those with mental ill-health, and so on.
New urban citizenship?
In the late 20th century globalisation placed major
European and North American cities at the centre
of the world economy. The rapid growth of the
service sector and creative industries produced a
well paid group of middle-class professionals who
wanted to live in the centres of cities because of
the proximity of work and entertainment
opportunities. As a result, post-industrial
gentrification changed the social and physical
Geography Vol 98 Part 1 Spring 2013
make-up of many city neighbourhoods as capital
moved back into the city. Living with
At the same time, at beginning of the 21st century,
difference:
the twin forces of the global economy and global proximity and
conflicts have dramatically accelerated patterns of encounter in
transnational migration intensifying the connections urban life
between different peoples, cultures and spaces.
This super mobility has created what Vertovec
(2007) has termed ‘super diversity’ in
contemporary cities across the globe (e.g. Law,
2002; Yeoh, 2004; Binnie et al., 2006). Other
forms of rapid population change are evident too.
The historical shift from industrial society to new
modernity, in which individuals are assumed to be
released from traditional constraints and to have
more freedom to create their own individualised
biographies (choosing between a range of lifestyles
and social ties) has resulted in the more open,
public expression of a diverse range of social
identities and ways of living. These include greater
visibility of people with disabilities; transgender and
transsexual people; different religions and spiritual
beliefs; and the ‘grey’ lifestyles of older people,
facilitated in part by equality legislation. In the
context of super mobility and super diversity, Stuart
Hall has claimed that ‘the capacity to live with
difference is … the coming question of the 21st
century’ (1993, p. 361). This issue has become
more pertinent given the rising levels of insecurity
generated by terrorism post 11 September 2001
and the current global financial collapse because,
historically, there has been a hardening of attitudes
towards ‘others’ during times of crisis.
Consequently, after a decade or more in which the
city was characterised as site of crime, conflict and
withdrawal (e.g. Smith, 1987; Valentine, 1989;
Davis, 1990; Mitchell, 2003) the city of the 21st
century is being re-imagined as a site of
connection. Iris Marion Young was one of the first
commentators to celebrate the city as a site of
difference. Young described city life as ‘a being
together of strangers’ (1990, p. 240). More
recently Doreen Massey has referred to our
‘throwntogetherness’ (2005, p. 181) with others in
the city; while Sennett argues that: ‘[a] city is a
place where people can … enter into the
experiences and interests of unfamiliar lives … to
develop a richer, more complex sense of
themselves’ (2001). This has prompted what has
been described as a ‘cosmopolitan turn’ (a stance
that implies openness towards diversity) in
geographical thinking about the city which has
celebrated the potential for the forging of new
hybrid cultures and ways of living together with
difference. Nigel Thrift (2005) for example, has
5
argued that the mundane friendliness and civility
 Geography Vol 98 Part 1 Spring 2013
that characterises many everyday urban public
Living with encounters between diverse urban strangers
represents a base-line democracy that might be
difference: fostered as part of a new urban citizenship. Thrift
proximity and talks about overlooked geographies of kindness
encounter in and compassion and about the potential for
urban life leaching these practices into the wider world.
The persistence of
prejudice
Nevertheless, I am concerned that some of the
geographical writing about cosmopolitanism and
new urban citizenship romanticises urban
encounters and is based on an assumption that
contact with ‘others’ will translate into respect for
difference (Valentine, 2008). We need to be careful
about mistaking everyday urban etiquette (such as
talking to strangers on public transport or in cafés
and queues) as respect for difference. Given public
behaviour is regulated by contemporary equality
laws, individuals may feel obliged to curb the public
expression of their personal prejudices, only
articulating them in ‘privatised’ spaces (such as at
home) where they know their opinions will be
shared and that even if challenged, will have no
wider consequences for that individual.
Moreover, many everyday moments of contact
between disparate individuals or groups in the city
may not actually represent encounters at all.
Although an internalised globalisation of society
has occurred in much of Europe, not everyone sees
themselves as part of this cosmopolitanism or will
chose to participate in interactions with people
different from themselves when opportunities occur
(Beck, 2006). For example, in a study of social
interactions in urban public places in Aylesbury, UK,
Caroline Holland and colleagues (2007) found that
although their research sites were frequented by a
range of different groups, this did not necessarily
mean that there was any contact between the
diverse inhabitants. Likewise, Ash Amin (2002) has
observed that city streets are spaces of transit that
produce little actual exchange between passing
strangers.
Indeed, spatial proximity can actually breed
defensiveness and the bounding of identities and
communities by generating or aggravating
comparisons between different social groups in
terms of perceived or actual access to resources.
For example, research conducted in an area of
relative social and economic deprivation found that
the white working-class community had a perceived
sense of injustice and victimhood because of local
concerns about unstable forms of employment and
6
poor housing which was projected onto minority
© Geography 2013
groups. These community narratives included
claims that minority groups (such as refugees,
asylum seekers, lesbians, gay men and disabled
people) were taking advantage of the welfare
system and receiving preferential treatment in
terms of benefits, housing and health care as well
as receiving financial and political support for their
own faiths, languages and wider cultural practices.
These were used to justify openly-held prejudices
towards minority groups in the local neighbourhood
(Valentine, 2010). In the context of both personal
and community insecurity it is possible to see why
some people find it hard to have mutual regard for
groups they perceive as an economic or cultural
threat. Indeed, being prejudiced can actually serve
positive ends for some individuals, for example, by
providing them with a scapegoat for their own
personal, social or economic failures. This means
that prejudiced individuals can have a vested
interest in remaining intolerant despite positive
individual social encounters with
communities/individuals different from themselves.
It is not surprising therefore that, despite several
decades of equal opportunities legislation, overt
prejudice against minority groups is still evident.
Police recorded incidents and surveys carried out
by non-governmental organisations have shown the
persistence of hate crimes, including racial
violence, ‘queer bashing’ and the targeting of
asylum seekers and travellers; while at the other
end of the spectrum everyday prejudices such as
sexism (e.g. demeaning comments, sexual
objectification) are also commonplace (Valentine,
2010). In particular, geographical research (e.g.
Anderson, 1991; Smith, 1987; Imrie, 1996) has
identified specific forms of discrimination such as
racism, sexism, disablism and homophobia by
demonstrating how negative systems of ideas and
practices in relation to minority ethnic groups,
women, disabled people and to a lesser extent
lesbians and gay men – rooted in the historical
context of European imperialism and modernity –
permeate employment, the criminal justice system
(including policing and private security), and civil
society (including access to goods, services and
public space).
A recent study by Zick et al. (2011) found that
negative attitudes towards minority groups are
widespread in Europe. They conducted a survey of
8000 people aged 16+ from France, Germany,
Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands,
Poland and Portugal (a representative sample of
1000 people from each country). These countries
were chosen to reflect the diverse geography of the
European Union. Over half of all the European
respondents stated that there are too many
© Geography 2013
immigrants in their country and a similar
percentage describing Islam as a ‘religion of
intolerance’. The majority of respondents also
supported sexist statements. Prejudices were
most evident in Poland and Hungary and least
prevalent in the Netherlands. For example, over
70% of survey respondents from Poland expressed
anti-Semitic views compared to 17% from the
Netherlands, and 88% of the Polish respondents
opposed same-sex marriage compared to 17% of
Dutch respondents (Zick et al., 2011). Not
surprisingly, the European Council is concerned
that rising intolerance may cause the creation of
parallel or segregated societies within European
cities, the loss of democratic freedoms and
possible clashes between the perceived rights and
freedoms of different minority groups (especially
between freedom of expression and religious
freedom).
How do we develop the
capacity to live with
difference?
Prejudice reduction programmes typically involve
educational strategies to enhance knowledge and
appreciation of minority groups and to challenge or
dilute stereotypes by providing counter information.
Yet, this article has demonstrated that policies to
tackle prejudice cannot concentrate on highlighting
the injustices experienced by minority groups
alone, but must also find ways of addressing
Geography Vol 98 Part 1 Spring 2013
majority groups’ justifications for holding negative
attitudes towards minorities. Here, geography, Living with
through its attention to the importance of space,
forces a reconceptualisation of the notion of
difference:
prejudice because these justifications are deeply proximity and
geographical in that they are usually rooted in encounter in
specific social and material conditions (e.g. urban life
housing, shortages, unemployment). Prejudice can
be understood as an emotional response to the
sense of unfairness and injustice which flows from
a period of unprecedented social and economic
change. The more insecure and fearful groups are
about maintaining their own economic position and
cultural values the greater their ‘justifications’ (e.g.
of unfairness, injustice) for defensively solidifying
the boundaries of their communities and for
undertaking pre-emptive action to stall perceived
threats and to defend communities and culture/
identities.
Writing in the aftermath of race disturbances which
took place in three British cities (Oldham, Burnley
and Bradford) in 2001, Amin (2002) recognised
that the proximity of different social groups on its
own is not enough to bring about social
transformation. Rather, Amin argued that we need
to create spaces of interdependence where people
from diverse backgrounds are brought together in
situations that provide them with the opportunity to
learn new ways of relating to each other in order to
develop intercultural understanding. For Amin this
is best achieved in what he terms the ‘micro-
7
 Geography Vol 98 Part 1 Spring 2013
publics of everyday social contact and encounter’
Living with (2002, p. 959) rather than engineered through
larger-scale events like public festivals or by
difference: equality and discrimination policies framed in
proximity and terms of rights and obligations at the national
encounter in scale. These ‘micro-publics’ include sports or
urban life music clubs, drama/theatre groups, communal
gardens, youth participation schemes, and so on.
They represent sites of purposeful organised group
activity where people from different backgrounds
are brought together with the opportunity to break
out of fixed patterns of interaction and learn new
ways of being and relating (Amin, 2002).
Fincher and Iveson (2008) suggest that the
creation of conviviality as a state of encounter
should be an intent of planning. Here, Finch and
Iveson identify the characteristics of particular
spaces where they believe this productive activity
can be produced or facilitated. These researchers
argue that public libraries are spaces of encounter
that have a redistributive function, in that they offer
free and – facilitated by design – equal access and
a safe space for individuals and groups. The
information resources and provision of areas to sit
and read or drink coffee can enable users to
mutually negotiate their common status as library
users and to build social capital (Finch and Iveson,
2008). Community centres in contrast are spaces
which emphasise recognition. Social encounters in
these spaces are relatively informal and can
quickly become familiar or home-like through
repeated visits. As such, these encounters are not
completely incidental (like meetings on the street)
but neither are they as organised and purposeful
as ‘micro-publics’ such as sports clubs and drama
groups.
In 2008 the Council of Europe published a White
Paper on intercultural dialogue, entitled Living
Together as Equals in Dignity. The Paper argued that
8 achieve social transformation given that proximity
© Geography 2013
the skills or competences to enable people to live
with difference are not necessarily automatically
acquired, instead they need to be taught and
practised from childhood. It identified the need for
such training at school and through life-long
educational programmes and informal education. A
number of initiatives have been developed by
groups within specific countries to find practical
responses to how we might live with difference. For
example, the Bielany Cultural Centre in Warsaw,
Poland, hosts a series of events including lectures,
films, performances, photography and art
exhibitions, to bring people together from different
communities to challenges stereotypes and to
encourage participants to improve their knowledge
of each other (see YEPP website). There are also
pan-European initiatives, for example, the Council
of Europe holds annual youth peace camps to bring
together young people from regions of Europe
where there are conflicts to take part in education
and training sessions about human rights, conflict
resolution and intercultural dialogue (see Council of
Europe, 2011).
There are many non-Western consensus-based
ways of developing dialogues across difference too.
Indaba is one such concept. Indaba is a Zulu or
Xhosa term from southern Africa, for an important
meeting held by izinDuna (leaders) in which the
participants gather together in a space in order to
address and resolve a problem or conflict.
Everyone has an equal voice and the group stays in
communion with each other until it can find a
common position or story upon which everyone
agrees (although there are similar consensus
models in other parts of Africa too). This southern
African model of addressing conflict was recently
adopted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan
Williams, at the decennial Lambeth Conference of
Anglican bishops, to create a dialogue across
difference between those members of this global
faith network who are opposed to the ordination of
gay bishops and blessings for same-sex
partnerships, and those who want equality for
lesbians and gay men.
Conclusion
This article has reflected on how we might live with
difference. On the one hand, the positive focus on
social transformation that characterises much
recent geographical writing about cosmopolitanism
provides a welcome antidote to a previous
emphasis in the discipline on cities as sites of
social exclusion and conflict. On the other hand,
however, we must be careful not to be too quick to
celebrate everyday encounters and their power to
© Geography 2013
in the city does not necessarily equate with
meaningful contact or positive change.
Even if a respect for difference can be produced
from particular kinds of purposeful, organised
micro-public encounters (i.e. where the contact is
meaningful) it still leaves the question of how this
can be scaled up beyond the moment given that
white majority prejudices appear to be rooted in
narratives of economic and/or cultural victimhood
in which old securities and certainties are
continually being eroded by unprecedented socio-
economic change. As such, geographers need to
address inequalities (real and perceived) as well
as diversity to fuse what are often seen as
separate debates about prejudice and respect,
with questions of social-economic inequality and
power.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the European Research Council
which is supporting this research and writing
through an Advanced Investigator Award (grant
agreement number 249658) entitled Living with
Difference in Europe: Making communities out of
strangers in an era of supermobility and
superdiversity. The material presented in this
article has been drawn from previously published
academic articles in Progress in Human Geography
and Tracce Urbane (edited by Cancellieri and
Scandurra).
References
Anderson, K. (1991) Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial
discourse in Canada, 1875–1980. Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University Press.
Amin, A. (2002) ‘Ethnicity and the multicultural city: living
with diversity’, Environment and Planning A, 34, pp.
959–80.
Beck, U. (2006) The Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Binnie, J., Holloway, J., Millington, S. and Young, C. (eds)
(2006) Cosmopolitan Urbanism. London: Routledge.
Council of Europe (2008) White Paper on Intercultural
Dialogue: Living Together as Equals in Dignity.
Strasbourg: Council of Europe.
Council of Europe (2011) Living Together: Combining
diversity and freedom in 21st Century Europe. Available
online at www.coe.int (last accessed 7 December
2012).
Davis, M. (1990) City of Quartz: Excavating the future in
Los Angeles. London: Verso.
Fincher, R. and Iveson, K. (2008) The Social Logics of
Urban Planning: Towards a just diversity in cities.
London: Palgrave.
Fine, M., Weis, L., Addleston, J. and Mazuza, J. (1997)
‘(In)secure times: constructing white working class
masculinities in the late twentieth century’, Gender and
Society, 11, pp. 52–68.
Hall, S. (1993) ‘Culture, community, nation’, Cultural
Studies, 7, pp. 349–63.
Holland, C., Clark, A., Katz, J. and Peace, S. (2007) Social
Geography Vol 98 Part 1 Spring 2013
Interactions in Urban Public Places. York: Joseph
Rowntree Foundation.
Imrie, R. (1996) The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification Living with
and the revanchist city. London: Routledge. difference:
Jackson, P. (ed) (1987) Race and Racism: Essays in social
geography. London: Allen & Unwin.
proximity and
Law, L. (2002) ‘Defying disappearance: cosmopolitan encounter in
public spaces in Hong Kong’, Urban Studies, 39, pp.
1625–45.
urban life
Massey, D. (2005) For Space. London: Sage.
Mitchell, D. (2003) The Right to the City. New York &
London: Guilford Press.
Peach, C. (ed) (1975) Urban Social Segregation. London:
Longman.
Smith, S.J. (1987) ‘Residential segregation: a geography
of English racism?’ in Jackson, P. (ed) Race and
Racism: Essays in social geography. London: Allen &
Unwin, pp. 22–39.
Sennett, R. (2001) ‘New capitalism, new isolation: a
flexible city of strangers’, message posted on CRIT-
GEOG-FORUM, 16 February.
Thrift, N. (2005) ‘But malice aforethought: cities and the
natural history of hatred’, Transactions of the Institute
of British Geographers, 30, pp. 133–50.
Valentine, G. (1989) ‘The geography of women’s fear’,
Area, 21, pp. 385–90.
Valentine, G. (2008) ‘Living with difference: reflections on
geographies of encounter’, Progress in Human
Geography, 32, pp. 321–35.
Valentine, G. (2010) ‘Prejudice – rethinking geographies
of oppression’, Social and Cultural Geography, 11, pp.
521–37.
Vertovec, S. (2007) ‘Super-diversity and its implications’,
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29, pp. 1024–54.
Yeoh, B. (2004) ‘Cosmopolitanism and its exclusions in
Singapore’, Urban Studies, 41, pp. 2431–45.
YEPP website: www.yepp-community.org/yepp/cms/
index.php (last accessed 2 January 2013)
Young, I.M. (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference.
Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
Zick, A., Kupper, B. and Hovermann, A. (2011)
Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination: A European
Report. Berlin: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Available online
at www.fes-gegen-rechtsextremismus.de (last accessed
7 December 2012).
Gill Valentine is Professor of Geography and Pro
Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sheffield, UK
(email: g.valentine@sheffield.ac.uk). 9
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.