Three invisible things in Finnish urban planning III: multiculturalism

Description

One would expect that planners, together with  other policy sectors such as housing and social policy, would be interested in where the new ethnic and language groups will live, how their specialised needs will be satisfied, and how this change in our national and local identities will affect the urban and regional development, including aesthetics. But no: time and again we get the answer that these are not planning issues, that they belong exclusively to housing and social policy sectors. This in spite of the fact that there is a widely shared understanding that segregation and its adverse effects should be avoided. But how? And if we are successful in this endeavour, what does it mean? And are we sure that this is the right answer?