14 September 2009

Malmø and the parallell society within the city

I found an article about a development of a parallell society in Malmø. The author Hans Rustad (Dokument.no "Rosengård- et annet land" 07 sept 2009) refers to the social antropolgist Aje Carlbom, who has lived and done some field work within Malmø’s township Rosengård. He says that you can live here your whole life, and you don't have to be in contact with Swedes. The township is ruled by its own sovereignty and doesn't recognize swedish way of life. There has also been an increasing tendency of violence in this area, and the police avoid it out of fear.
The demography has changed very fast in Malmø. Almost 40 % of the population is foreign. The biggest group is the Danish with 9000 persons, if you calculate after cultural identity, the Arabs are the biggest group with 11 000 people. People from the same cultures tend to seek together, and this is what has happend in Rosengård. A parallell society has developed with no or few bonds to the society around. The article is in Norwegian, but I quote: ”Et kjennemerke på det moderne globaliserte samfunn er det multietniske, at man aksepterer forskjeller, men respekterer universelle prinsipper. Problemet med Sverige er at de har gjort annerkjennelse av Den andre til en kvasipolitisk religion i den grad at de har gitt fra seg styringsretten”. Is there a short way between recognition of other cultures/ societies and loosing its own ? This might be at topic full of taboos.

I also found a similar challenge in Paris, in the suburbs of Courneuve/ Saint-Denis (north and east Paris). How do we meet these challenges as architects? How do we map these parallell societies within cities, especially if it is like Aje Carlbom imply, that the parallell society in Malmø is like an isolated cell?

Link to the articles:
http://www.document.no/2009/09/rosengard_-_et_annet_land.html

http://vg.subnett.no/visArtikkel.asp?id=1141654

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