By Greg Scruggs, Citiscope

“Local leadership matters. Mayors have a pulpit and when used effectively, it can do fantastic things.”
Ratna Omidvar
Global Diversity Exchange, Ryerson University

There are few things more “traditionally Copenhagen” than riding a bike.

Ubiquitous two-wheelers are the standard mode of transportation for residents of the Danish capital, widely considered the most bike-friendly city in the world, where over half of all local trips are reportedly accomplished by pedal power. But for recently arrived immigrants from countries where women’s roles are restricted in the public sphere, the humble bicycle can be intimidating.

Since 2004, the Danish Red Cross has offered free bicycle lessons to new arrivals, with a special emphasis on women from the Middle East, where cultural norms and long, flowing clothing can make navigating the city by bike a challenge. Immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees alike have taken advantage of the classes, which offer basic instruction on technique, rules of the road and repairs.

Such efforts are all the more urgent as Denmark continues to absorb waves of migrants following the human tide that started entering Europe’s borders last year, fleeing violence and poverty in North Africa and the Middle East.

[See: Learning the language of cities in crisis]

While conservative Danish parliamentarians recently made headlines with proposed legislation to confiscate refugees’ assets, long-running programmes such as this Red Cross project have had a salutary effect for immigrant integration.

“They normalize women in the eyes of others,” Ratna Omidvar, head of the Global Diversity Exchange at Toronto’s Ryerson University, said during a U. N. roundtable on migrants and cities in December organized by the International Organization for Migration.

Herself an immigrant to Canada, Omidvar is one of the immigrant-friendly country’s leading experts on inclusion in a multicultural society. Toronto, Canada’s largest city, is in turn a national standard bearer for tolerance and diversity, with half of all its residents foreign-born.

Cities are on the front line when it comes to migration, and the United Nations is currently debating its 20-year urbanization strategy, the New Urban Agenda, to be agreed upon this October at the U. N. Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development, also known as Habitat III.

[See: Habitat III can help migration drive city development]

In light of recent global events such as the European migrant crisis and the U. N.’s key traditional role in dealing with refugee situations, migration may prove an unexpected pillar of the new agenda. Given the new polarization of the discussion around migration, however, the exact character of that role remains to be seen.

Welcoming 101

In Canada, embracing immigrants starts at the top. Multiculturalism is national policy that has practical implications — easy immigration for skilled foreigners, say, and a welcoming attitude toward refugees. With many foreigners landing in Toronto, the city has become a pioneer in innovative strategies to integrate its new residents.

Banks have changed mortgage-lending criteria to accommodate refugees with extended families. The municipal government has installed tandoori ovens alongside barbeque grills in city parks. “This is policymaking from the shop floor as opposed to the elite towers of policy,” Omidvar said.

Through the Lifeline Syria programme, citizen groups — from a religious institution to a neighbourhood association to a corporation — can sponsor refugee families and provide a welcoming community as they adjust to life in greater Toronto.

To Omidvar’s mind, these policy changes mean one thing: “Local leadership matters.” As a result, she said, “Mayors have a pulpit and when used effectively, it can do fantastic things.” For example, the former mayors of Stuttgart, Germany, and New Haven, USA, earned plaudits for issuing identification cards to undocumented immigrants, a small gesture that helps them navigate daily life.

[See: In a city of immigrants, Rotterdam’s mayor leads by example]

One mayor setting an example is Calgary’s Naheed Nenshi, the first Muslim to serve as mayor of a Canadian city. He has been aggressive in his search for public and private resources to house Syrian refugees, for example.

“For many decades we have officially been a multicultural nation, and it’s important to set the tone at the top,” he told the U. N. audience via video link from Calgary City Hall. “But what really matters is how we live that every day.”

When anti-refugee graffiti appeared at a transit station, a group of Calgary citizens banded together to clean it up and held a rally with messages supporting the new arrivals.

Backlash

The scenes last year of people welcoming the tired who had walked hundreds if not thousands of kilometres to reach favoured destinations such as Germany and Sweden have slowly been replaced by darker images.

A reactionary trend has taken hold in many parts of Europe, especially following incidents during New Year’s Eve celebrations during which women were assaulted in public spaces. Media accounts and law enforcement in part have blamed young men from North Africa and the Middle East, including some recently arrived.

On the periphery of Hamburg, a tent city has served as a temporary refuge since October. But attempts to settle refugees permanently have met with opposition, including calls for a referendum in which refugees — who are not German citizens — would not have a right to vote.

This has led the Hamburg chapter of the global Right to the City Network, a coalition of housing and land-rights activists who are organizing around Habitat III, to issue a resolution on 9 February decrying “the current emergency urbanism and a planned referendum against refugee housing.”

[See: Pope Francis invokes Right to the City amid focus on migration]

By reframing the claims of a refugee crisis as a housing crisis and asserting that refugees, too, have a right to the city, the group hopes to counteract some of the xenophobic rhetoric that has emerged in the heart of what was recently Europe’s most welcoming country to refugees.

This seesaw of attitudes has in turn created an opportunity for the U. N. to stake out ground in favor of cities as the receiving point for immigrants. (The United Nations, the World Humanitarian Summit and the U. K. government, with support from the International Rescue Committee, are sponsoring a related public event on 18 February in New York.)

“The New Urban Agenda is an opportunity for the International Organization for Migration and the U. N. High Commissioner for Refugees,” said Ana Moreno, coordinator of the Habitat III Secretariat. “It’s the right place to talk about national agendas and local policies.”

The New Urban Agenda, whose first draft will come out in late April or early May, is likely to be composed of material drawn largely from 10 expert “policy units” currently engaged deliberations. While none of these groups are explicitly focused on migration or refugees, three policy units — on the Right to the City and Cities for All, Socio-Cultural Urban Framework and Housing Policies — are potential platforms to take up these issues.

[See: Key drafts of Habitat III policy papers open for public comment]

More broadly, the notion of an urbanizing world is impelled, in part, by migration. “There is a New Urban Agenda to help us think through this: Can we make dense, transit-oriented places?” asked Jacqueline Klopp, a scholar at the Columbia University Earth Institute’s Center for Sustainable Urban Development. “If we are going to build urban infrastructure for all these people, we have to be efficient or it’s going to be expensive.”

Source: Citiscope.org

Citiscope is a nonprofit news outlet that covers innovations in cities around the world. More at Citiscope.org.