Diversity, urban space and the right to the provincial city

Abstract

Using three vignettes of the same physical space this article contributes to understanding of how the right to the city is contested in provincial England in the early twenty-first century. Oral history and ethnographic material gathered in Peterborough between 2010 and 2012 are drawn on to shed new light on the politics of diversity and urban space. This highlights the multiple place attachments and trans-spatial practices of all residents, including the white ethnic majority, as well as contrasting forms of active intervention in space with their different temporalities and affective intensities. The article carries its own diversity politics, seeking to reduce the harm done by racism through challenging the normalisation of the idea of a local, indigenous population, left out by multiculturalism. It simultaneously raises critical questions about capitalist regeneration strategies in terms of their impact both on class inequality and on the environment. © 2013 Copyright The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.