Place-Making in Ethnoburbs: The Production and Governance of Cultural Diversity in Sydney’s Hurstville

Abstract

Immigration and the global movement of people have continued to shape city form and urban life, engendering social and spatial transformations to the local context. There is a growing tendency for contemporary immigrants to settle in suburban areas, where ‘ethnoburbs’ are created under the influence of socio-demographic differences, changing national policies, and transnational flows of commerce and capital. Migrant groups actively adapt and remake long-established suburbs through commercial and cultural activity, and local governments must respond to sometimes dramatic changes in neighbourhood character. This thesis illustrates the various ways in which this has occurred in Sydney’s Hurstville, a suburb that is now well-known for having the largest concentration of ethnic Chinese in Australia. This thesis focusses on the place-making practices that have influenced the spatial formation of Chinese residents in Hurstville, which is beyond the conventional notion of Chinatown. It provides new understanding and insights into how migrant groups inhabit, (re)shape and even territorialise spaces that are specific to the ethnoburb condition. It has four core empirical chapters. First, it traces how Hurstville has been transformed by the influx of immigrants and their establishment of ethnic businesses over several decades, using archival research to trace how narratives of change were expressed in local media. Second, it explores how ethnic entrepreneurs inhabited and transformed the commercial spaces of the ‘local street’ by a close study of architectural façades, signage, and layouts. Third, it analyses the suburb’s ‘foodscape’, and how a range of consumers, restaurant owners, and bloggers have interpreted Hurstville through its culinary identity. Fourth, it examines how local government has responded to the presence of a very concentrated, even homogeneous, set of migrant ethnic identities.