African Cities Cultural Heritage, Urban Fragmentation, and Territorial Spatial Development

Inter Cultural Territorial Spatial Development Praxis

The African city can be considered a physical manifestation of cultural heritage that represents the nature of its cultural landscapes. Consequently, inter-cultural territorial spatial development as a new kind of cultural space that will encompass identity, kinship and creative innovation. Major multicultural festivals have also been the victim of their success as well as a challenge to institutional racism. From being re-sited from their original community and cauterised into communal parks away from residential areas (Notting Hill, Caribana). Territorial spatial developments can therefore be contested, in short supply and subject to commodification. Cutural heritage as a creative space can more successfully negotiate difference, exhibit temporal as well as spatial (and symbolic) territories and be less place-bound. It can also become adaptive, as well as promote and mediate consumer culture. In turn, as (Sandercock, 2003) iterated: “becoming a diverse society/city is more than a matter of bureaucratic management, or of citizenship legislation. It also requires the active construction of new ways of living together, new forms of spatial and social belonging”(Sandercock, 2003).

Like the ethnic enclave concept, kinship-innovation (where non kins and kinship excel within commercial opportunities) impacts at an organisational level, and can be amplified in a macro urban city setting (Berliant and Fujita, 2009). Yet no research has so far considered the impact of cultural heritage on innovation within firms in a highly diverse city. The UK capital, London is one of the world’s major cities and one of its most culturally diverse – in terms of country of birth, language and ethnicity. London’s substantially diverse makeup is now regarded as cosmopolitan and seen as a social asset (Beck, 2002).

(Florida, 2002) suggests that liberal, tolerant skilled workers are now the driving force of Western economies. The ethnic diversity of the West’s population and the linguistic, cultural and religious diversity that accompanies it gives it a comparative economic advantage. In the age of globalization, having workers with a knowledge of diverse languages, cultural and religious practices of the global market confers on Western economic advantage that can be referred to (Cope & Kalantzis, 1997) as ‘productive diversity’. The Creative Class is largely responsible for knowledge creation, so that culturally diverse firms will be more innovative – although diversity itself may not have a direct effect. As a consciously cosmopolitan city like London, it is not rare to experience initiatives to deliberately seek a more diverse setting within its workforce. However, Creative Class approaches have been criticised for their theoretical foundations (Glaeser, 2005) and appear to lose much of their predictive power in the UK, (Nathan, 2005). Other existing theory and evidence suggest a number of diversity-innovation channels. Culturally diverse teams may be better at generating new thinking or problem solving, particularly in knowledge-intensive environments (Page, 2007), (Fujita and Weber, 2003). Through diasporic communities and social responsibility initiatives; migrant or minority staff and business owners can access additional markets, assisting ethically driven process innovation and the commercialisation of new ideas (Saxenian, 2006). It is environments like this that drive, ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ to play a number of critical roles in urban innovation. They are seen as more likely to develop new ideas and can act as intermediaries between firms in different countries (Wadhwa et al. 2007). At a macro city level, urbanisation economies may aid access to international supply chains; conversely, large and diverse domestic supply chains provide more opportunities for product hybridisation (Mazzolari and Neumark, 2009). In both cases, diverse firms may be best placed to take advantage of these processes. Cultural heritage can serve as a vehicle for increasing the potential of African cities to attract global capital, tourism, and international firms. Also it ensures the sustainability of kinship and cultural heritage; it will create a chance to build Africa’s local communities within it’s urban cities. Inter cultural diversity are likely to benefit from the diversified nature of African cities. One of their most critical needs is to feel at home or have a “sense of place.” Indeed the art of an urban city is to make newcomers feel at home as citizens (Bloomfield and Bianchini, 2004).