Designing for an increasingly diverse population is one of four scans that forms part of the Population Change theme for RIBA Horizons 2034.
Imagine stepping into an average neighbourhood in Britain 10 years from now. You will be surrounded by people whose heritage and cultures hail from across the globe, more so than is the case today and has been in the past. People in the neighbourhood will also be more similar to one another in age than they are today.
Population trends mean that soon we can expect neighbourhoods across the country to be less age-mixed and more ethnically diverse than ever before.
Ethnic diversification is not only the prospect for Britain but, to varying degrees, for most countries around the world. Indeed, the last two centuries are known as the ‘age of migration’, and international population movement has intensified in the decades since the Second World War. [1] For more on migration and displacement, see the horizon scan by Guy Abel. [2]
The International Organisation for Migration reports that the number of international migrants has increased in all regions of the world since the 1990s. [3] This has brought increased ethnic diversity, particularly for countries that are net gainers of population from immigration. [4]
As the horizon scan on demographics by Maria Evandrou illustrated, [5] most countries are now also ageing in that the proportions of their population in the oldest age groups are increasing. [6] It is in this context that residential age separation is happening.
In less developed countries in the Global South – apart from those in central and southern Africa and some parts of Asia – a history of high fertility rates and rapid population growth are today responsible for “a relatively large number of older persons”. [7] In the more developed countries of the Global North, population ageing has been the trend for some decades already and has spurred national and international movements for ‘age-friendly communities’.
How, then, can places that meaningfully connect with and serve intergenerational, diverse communities be created?
This horizon scan takes the case of Britain to review the latest evidence on neighbourhood diversity and considers the implications for the architectural profession, professional institutes and the communities they serve. It asks: how should architects respond to the changing makeup of our communities to better support diverse and intergenerational communities and promote social cohesion?
Increased local diversity has the potential to reduce inequalities, challenge stigmas, and contribute to the success and vibrancy of democratic operations. When it is properly managed, it creates inclusive places where all can feel comfortable and at home.
Well-managed diversity can improve the wellbeing of individuals and maintain peace and solidarity across and within communities. For built environment professionals and their professional institutes, considering local diversity in design enables engagement with social and spatial justice.
Trends in geographies of diversity in ethnicity and age: the case of Britain
The ethnic composition of people in neighbourhoods across Britain has, over the last three decades, become more diverse and less residentially segregated. In other words, local places now have people from a broader range of ethnic backgrounds than in the past and are more similar to one another in their ethnic composition.
Where the more than 15 million people, who in 2021 identified as belonging to an ethnic group other than White British, live is more evenly spread across neighbourhoods than in the past.
This conclusion is drawn from looking at census data for small areas using methods of spatial analysis – such as the index of dissimilarity and the reciprocal diversity index. [8]
Figure 1
This figure presents the ethnic composition of selected diverse districts of England, in London (Graph A) and outside London (Graph B). In Newham, for example, there is a roughly equal proportion (around 15%) of people who identify as Bangladeshi, White British, Other White (largely Eastern European), Black African, Indian and Pakistani ethnic groups, together with people from all other ethnic groups for which data are collected.
The expectation is that these trends of increasing local ethnic diversity will continue over the next decade. This will be a result of family building (people across ethnic groups having children), inter-ethnic mixing in partnerships, continued immigration, and migration away from urban centres, where ethnic minorities have historically been clustered, to suburban and rural areas. [9]
An important coincident trend is also shaping Britain’s neighbourhoods: age segregation. Age segregation is taking place in a context of population ageing. However, the ageing of neighbourhoods in terms of their population structure, and the increase in residential age segregation, are not happening evenly across the country.
Although older and younger age groups are increasingly living apart in urban and rural areas, the fastest rates of increase in age segregation are found in small cities and districts peripheral to the major conurbations, as shown in Figure 2. [10]
Figure 2
This cartogram shows how increasing levels of residential age segregation changed across districts of England and Wales between 1991 and 2011.
In this relatively young field of research, findings on local age segregation around the world are mixed. In the USA, for example, past work has shown increasing age segregation, but more recent analyses suggest no increase and perhaps even a decline in age segregation in some areas. [11]
In Hong Kong, although residential segregation between ages is generally low, it is highest (as in other countries, including the UK and the US) between young adults (in their 20s) and older adults (in their 60s and older).
What is evident across countries is that a major force shaping residential patterning – by age and ethnicity – is wealth. The type of housing and neighbourhood someone can live in depends upon their financial situation. Uneven residential mosaics by age and ethnicity are layered upon socio-economic residential segregation.[12]
There’s a difference between the housing that older people and younger people can afford, and on average between what different ethnic groups can afford. This is an important driver of residential patterns because housing of different values tends to be spatially clustered. [13]
A factor that is distinguishing between young people in terms of the types of housing and neighbourhoods they can afford is access to financial (and other) support from parents. This can affect their housing experience now and also in the future, contributing to widening housing inequalities over time. [14]
Similarly, wealth and housing inequalities by ethnicity shape opportunities of where to live [15], and socio-economic disadvantage for many ethnic minority groups in Britain is well established. [16] So too do structural changes to housing markets that disproportionately affect ethnic minority groups.
In particular, the development – gentrification – of urban centres has displaced some ethnic minority communities. The once-cheap land upon which these immigrant-origin communities settled has now become very valuable such that many ethnic minorities cannot afford to remain living there. [17] This is wrapped up in the increasing financialisation of housing, as outlined in the horizon scan by Matthew Soules. [18]
Given the ongoing housing crises in Britain and elsewhere, we can expect issues arising from differential access to housing and its impact on residential patterns to continue over the next decade. Thus, as the population ages and diversifies, we can also expect spatial polarisation across the intersecting axes of age, ethnicity and wealth to continue to require decided intervention.
Implications for design
Achieving social and spatial justice and creating cohesive communities are set to remain prominent ambitions in political and academic movements.
Since the current trends of neighbourhoods becoming increasingly ethnically diverse and age-polarised are mediated by the built environment, its design has an important role to play in creating inclusive places. In this way, design can engage with salient policy debates including intergenerational fairness, levelling up and an inclusive Britain.
The goal of being inclusive is by no means new and, indeed, inclusivity has become rather ubiquitous. So, understanding how it could be interpreted and applied would add some important nuance. Concerning the evidence presented here, two issues of operationalisation arise. First, how to create places that welcome all ages and ethnicities. And second, how to create places whose built environments enable appropriate and affordable housing for an ethnically and demographically mixed population.
Creating welcoming places: paying attention to orientation
The notion of ‘orientation’ is useful in considering how building designers and their professional bodies might approach inclusivity for the next decade. [19] Rather than referring to a building’s relationship to the street or the sun, for example, here orientation refers to building users’ different senses of being, capabilities and social positions – including their age and ethnicity.
Envisioning and attending to individuals’ experiences of being in and passing through space can help in the creation of places, environments and structures that consciously address different orientations. The objective is to design for people with multiple, intersecting orientations to maximise their collective sense of comfort and feeling included.
From small design features such as neighbourhood benches [20] to more extensive ones, attending to individuals’ differing orientations enables them to access and enjoy a place, and to experience everyday encounters that instil a sense of belonging and conviviality. [21]
Considering multiple orientations alerts designers to ‘memory justice’ – that is, fairly and representatively preserving communities’ memories of spaces and places through memorials of various kinds. In this way, future designs can encode the diverse histories associated with a place and its community.
Paying attention to orientation can aid a move beyond representational diversity (e.g. Black architects doing Black design) by encouraging all involved in design to position themselves in alternative ways. This, first of all, requires potentially uncomfortable reflection on their own positions, or orientations, and the privileges they hold.
Having an appreciation, for example, of everyday experiences of exclusion can support an anti-racist approach to design. It may also encourage reflections on how to decolonise the profession and its institutions.
A ‘multiple orientations’ approach can also be usefully applied to the creation of age-friendly places – in other words, places where people of all ages are accommodated and feel comfortable. [22] For example, it may spur the development of urban and rural neighbourhoods that draw on social infrastructure – that is, the existing knowledge, relationships and resources – and the agency of communities across ages to enact collaborative place-making. [23]
Structural enablers to residential mixing
The key to responding effectively to the age segregation and ethnic diversity trends in residential neighbourhoods is to provide their communities with access to housing that meets their many needs. [24] This is a complex issue but key to improving housing experience and reducing housing inequalities is to establish a mix of sizes and prices of properties that align with the needs of the local population.
Increasing age and ethnic mixing in Britain’s neighbourhoods over the next decade will, for example, require innovative and creative approaches to housing. The mix provided will have to accommodate needs throughout people’s lives in affordable ways.
Aspiring to intergenerational, age-mixed, age-friendly and ethnically diverse neighbourhoods (in urban and rural areas) requires commensurate diversity in housing, community infrastructure, open space and other aspects of local design.
Of course, engaging with new housing and community approaches is just part of the solution. However, the potential for significant and sustained change is severely limited without new funding models for property and housing.
Many scholars have argued that, to achieve accessible, affordable and more equitable housing – as the basis for socially just, sustainable and cohesive communities – housing needs to be de-financialised: “Excessive housing financialization undermines the social reproduction of national–urban economies and destroys urban housing systems, and the communities living within them”. [25]
Towards inclusive places
The ethnic diversification and age polarisation of Britain’s neighbourhoods poses a challenge for the architectural profession and professional institutes: how to design local places to achieve community cohesion and augment social justice?
This horizon scan proposes that a valuable approach is to think creatively about stakeholders’ orientation in assessing how residential and community infrastructure can be designed to meet the diverse needs of local populations.
Collaboration across sectors and with communities will be vital to the success of this ambition, as will a commitment from professional bodies and sector leaders to embed a creative, consultative and multi-oriented approach to strategic and professional development.
The degree to which these design ambitions can be achieved in the next decade to 2034 is somewhat contingent on reforms to planning models and housing systems and a commitment to social and spatial justice.
Author biography
Nissa Finney is Professor of Human Geography at the University of St Andrews and Director of Research for the School of Geography and Sustainable Development (University of St Andrews). She has published and taught widely on ethnic inequalities, residential mobility, housing, neighbourhood change and segregation. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a member of the Centre for Population Change and the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity.
Nissa’s books include ‘Sleepwalking to Segregation’? Challenging myths of race and migration (2009) and Racism and ethnic inequalities in a time of crisis (2023). Nissa’s work has brought new understandings in population scholarship on diversity, evidencing differential opportunities and experiences in residential choices, underlying processes of exclusion, and policy narratives that marginalise groups and places.
RIBA Horizons 2034 sponsored by Autodesk
References
[1] H. De Haas, S. Castles and M.J. Miller (2019). The Age of Migration. International Population Movements in the Modern World. Bloomsbury Academic
[2] RIBA - G. Abel (2024). International migration and displacement: the impact on the urban landscape
[3] International Organisation for Migration - M. McAuliffe and A. Triandafyllidou (eds) (2021). World Migration Report 2022
[4] Statista - M. Armstrong (28 September 2022). A Global Overview of Human Migration
[5] RIBA - M. Evandrou (2024). Demographics: slowing population growth, changing families and an ageing population
[6] United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2023). World Population Ageing 2023: Challenges and opportunities of population ageing in the least developed countries. UN DESA/ POP/2023/TR/NO.5
[7] ibid., p. 23
[8] G. Catney, C.D. Lloyd, M. Ellis, R. Wright, N. Finney, S. Jivraj and D. Manley (2023). Ethnic diversification and neighbourhood mixing: A rapid response analysis of the 2021 Census of England and Wales. In The Geographical Journal 189, 63–77
[9] N. Finney and G. Catney (2016). Ethnic Diversity. In T. Champion and J. Falkingham (Eds). The Changing Population of the United Kingdom. Rowman and Littlefield International
[10] A. Sabater, E. Graham and N. Finney (2017). The spatialities of ageing: Evidencing increasing spatial polarisation between older and younger adults in England and Wales. In Demographic Research 36(25), 731–744
[11] D. Das Gupta and D. W. S. Wong (2022). Changing Age Segregation in the US: 1990 to 2010. In Research on Aging 44(9-10), 669–681.
[12] M. van Ham, M. Uesugi, T. Tammaru, et al. (2020). Changing occupational structures and residential segregation in New York, London and Tokyo. In Nature Human Behaviour 4, 1124–1134
[13] A. Sabater and N. Finney (2023). Age segregation and housing unaffordability: Generational divides in housing opportunities and spatial polarisation in England and Wales. In Urban Studies 60(5), 941–961
[14] R. Arundel and C. Hochstenbach (2020). Divided access and the spatial polarization of housing wealth. In Urban Geography 41(4), 497–523
[15] S. Lukes, N. de Noronha, and N. Finney (2019). Slippery discrimination: a review of the drivers of migrant and minority housing disadvantage. In Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45(17), 3188–3206
[16] BUP/Policy Press - Finney, N., Nazroo, J., Becares, L., Kapadia, D., Shlomo, N. (Eds) (2023). Racism and Ethnic Inequality in a Time of Crisis: Findings from the Evidence for Equality National Survey
[17] E. Hill, N. Meer and T. Peace (2021). The role of asylum in processes of urban gentrification. In The Sociological Review 69(2), 259–276
[18] RIBA - M. Soules (2024). Financialisation: buildings and architecture at the centre of global financial systems
[19] S. Ahmed (2007). A phenomenology of whiteness. In Feminist Theory 8(2), 149–168
[20] C, Rishbeth and B. Rogaly (2018). Sitting outside: Conviviality, self-care and the design of benches in urban public space. In Trans Inst Br Geogr. 43(2), 284–298
[21] F. Ganji, C. Rishbeth (2020). Conviviality by design: the socio-spatial qualities of spaces of intercultural urban encounters. In Urban Des Int 25, 215–234
[22] World Health Organization(n.d.). Creating age-friendly cities and communities
[23] T. Buffel and C. Phillipson (2023). Ageing in Place in Urban Environments: Critical Perspectives. Routledge
[24] J. Van hood, H.R. Marston, J.K. Kazak and T. Buffel (2021). Ten questions concerning age-friendly cities and communities and the built environment. In Building and Environment 199
[25] G. Wijburg (2021). The de-financialization of housing: towards a research agenda. In Housing Studies 36(8), 1276–1293
