Monoculture

We are now three years in Aston and sometimes I have the feeling that the tide is running against us. We selected Aston mainly because it was a multicultural and multireligious neighbourhood, and we hoped very much to build bridges between people of differing background. We had no illusion about how difficult this would be: you can't force people to become friends with strangers! We knew it would be a slow process of establishing trusting relationships.

But shall we have the time to do so? Is our neighbourhood not changing from a multicultural community into a monoculture? The statistics have it that about 20% of the population of Aston is white English and Irish, but that is not the impression you get when you walk the streets. You hardly see any white people: they seem to have disappeared from the scene.

What is happening is that white people are still moving out of the neighbourhood. They follow their children who have moved out ahead of them in search of the employment opportunities no longer found in Aston. The same is happening, but to a lesser extent, to the Afro-Caribbean people. They are still present in good numbers, but they are ageing and their children are no longer with them. The empty places are being taken in part by new migrants, refugees from Africa and Asia, and economic migrants from Eastern Europe. It remains to be seen, however, how stable these new arrivals will be. This leaves the Asian population, from Pakistan and Bangladesh, already in the majority. They are a young population, fast growing in this country and with plenty of relatives in their countries of origin willing to come to England and hoping for a better life. They will occupy the empty places left by the other groups and as a consequence Aston will grow into a monocultural neighbourhood.

I like to emphasise that the processes underlying this development are all very natural, there is nothing sinister about them. Lots of individual decisions, all making sense by themselves, point in the same direction and the combined outcome is a monoculture.

How to react to this development? You can't stop the tide. I think, two things can be done. There are people in Aston among the white and the Afro-Caribbean population who do not want to move out. They see the variety that is still being present as a plus, as something to be appreciated and cherished. It will be important to spot these people and support them in whatever way we can. They show what a future of living together may look like. Secondly, when neighbourhoods continue to lose much of their variety, one needs to look beyond one's own neighbourhood and attempt to bring neighbourhoods of different kinds together. As somebody told me in a slightly different context: it will make the difference between a ghetto and an enclave.

Ton

Closures

 

When we arrived in Aston three years ago, the Guild Arms, the pub at the corner of Witton and Ettington roads was all boarded up. Nothing has changed since then in spite of several attempts to auction off the pub. Perhaps the problem is that the land belonging to the pub has been sold and redeveloped. In fact, the very house we are living in is built on it, so that I cannot really complain. Just the same, selling off the open space of a property may make it more difficult to sell the rest, in particular if it concerns a listed building, as the pub is said to be. The result is that what should be a beauty to look at becomes an eyesore.

Recently, at the beginning of the academic year, another building in Aston was closed down. It was not an old building at all: City Academy Aston opened its doors only in 2004 and the building it occupied was newly constructed. It is sad to see a building like that go out of use. Apparently, City Academy, which has four other campuses in Birmingham, saw no future in keeping the Aston campus open. One wonders what will happen to the building now?

Opposite City Academy Aston, the Broadway School, the largest secondary school in the area with 1,300 pupils, has its campus for the 7 and 8 years. It will not remain in its present location for long. If everything goes according to schedule, the Aston campus will join the main campus of the Broadway School in January 2011. The unanswered question is what will happen to the vacated building and how will it be protected against vandalism?

The Aston Library dates back to the time when Aston was still an independent coumcil, that is before 1911 when the amalgation with Birmingham City took place. Its long history, however, does not guarantee its continued existence. There are no less than 40 community libraries in Birmingham and all are under review for delivering value for money. The announced spending cuts may mean that a number of libraries will be closed and its services transferred to mobile libraries. If this happens to the library in Aston another building will close down, as Aston Pride which has its offices in the same building, will stop operations in March 2011.

All buildings under discussion lie within a short distance of one another: standing at the corner where the pub is one has the other three buildings in one's vision. While going around taking pictures of them a resident approached me and commented that Aston is becoming a depressive place. He was not just talking about the buildings, but about the high unemployment and the benefit cuts as well. For him Aston was not the place to be.

Ton