Quote:
Originally Posted by Capsicum
London seems different from North American cities in terms of how strong racial segregation appears relative to class segregation.
It seems like over there class and immigration history is relatively speaking a stronger force for segregation than race in and of itself -- so, working class whites and working class blacks have more in common and share neighborhoods way more than rich immigrant whites and blacks. In the US, you don't really see this much at all.
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The secret is just to mix the classes. This has long been a Victorian tradition, whereby rich neighbourhoods were built in poor ones to add cachet and push up their prices (a rich new development in a posh area was yawn inducing, one in a down at heel area caught the headlines).
Today it's continued due to the neverending series of housing bubbles - property is so expensive and lucrative people don't care where they're buying, just so long as it turns a profit. Posh middle class villas will have properties on the street subdivided into bedsits for the poor, apartments for the middle classes and entire mansion blocks for the rich, all on the same street. Meanwhile tower blocks, once highrise ghettoes have become some of the most profitable properties in the world, with legions of middle class 'pioneers' refurbishing these spacious flats - and of course all their children, rich or poor will be mixing. In the long run this means classes mix. Newly arrived immigrants, who are poor, will find themselves with access to middle class opportunities rather than being stuck in a poor ghetto- they can build relationships, jobs, clientele and importantly - education - with the middle classes just by dint of living in the same neighbourhoods. Over the years poor immigrants became the middle class, starting a cyclical system with newcomers, more so nowadays as the global elite buy up properties to park their money and form the upper class - at first the Arabs, Germans and Americans, giving way to the French, Chinese and Russians, now the Africans, Lat Am, Indians and Italians.
In retrospect the govt was actually quite racist and divisive to begin with (actively trying to create ghettoes back in the 50s), but the mixing of classes usurped all that.