The ‘Super-diverse streets’ project was an ESRC-funded research exploration of the intersections between city streets, social diversity and economic adaptations in the context of accelerated migration (ref: ES/L009560/1). It was a comparative analysis of ‘super-diverse’ high streets that explored how urban retail economies and spaces are shaped by and shape migrant practices. Through the perspective of the multi-ethnic street, aspects of both economic and civic forms of organisation were explored. The project period spanned from 2015 to 2017, and focuses on five high streets within the UK’s most diverse cities, including: London, Leicester, Manchester, Birmingham and Bradford. The project focused on increasing migration into UK Cities over the past two decades, and extended to how urban concentrations of migrants locate, invest in and transform the economies and spaces of UK cities, in particular its urban high streets. This project engaged across processes of macro societal changes, combining migration and shifts in urban retail economies, through the transformation of micro worlds. The making of space, exchange, regulation and representation were at the project’s core.

The first phase of this project incorporated a qualitative survey conducted in 2015, on four ‘super-diverse’ high streets: Rookery Road (Birmingham); Stapleton Road (Bristol); Narborough Road (Leicester); and Cheetham Hill (Manchester). In total, the face-to-face surveys across four streets incorporate 910 units. This included 480 retail units and 351 proprietors were surveyed.  This new data on ‘super-diverse streets’ provides insights into the micro-economies that provide important economic and civic resources across UK cities. These are streets that are located in ethnically diverse and comparatively deprived urban places, where urban retail spaces shape and are shaped by migrant investments.

The project built on Ordinary Streets, an earlier research project focusing on Peckham Rye Lane.

Related Research:

Global Cities, Local Streets: Spaces of Everyday Diversity
This website provides information about the 12 shopping streets explored in the book publication Global Cities, Local Streets: Spaces for Everyday Diversity from New York to Shanghai by Sharon Zukin, Philip Kasinitz and Xiangming Chen.