Social Integration in Public Spaces & Landscapes: Perceptions and Experiences towards Multicultural Shanghai

Abstract

Multiculturalism in today’s globalised economies has become a hot topic. This research seeks to document the differing experiences of non-Chinese and Chinese to public spaces and landscapes, focusing on the factors influencing the involvement of non-Chinese people in public spaces and landscapes. The study seeks to ascertain whether particular public spaces have social significance in the integration of non-Chinese people in Shanghai, China, and whether there is a need to develop a policy in relation to strategies for social integration in the now thriving multicultural Shanghai communities. Multiculturalism and Urbanism for future cities can be the basis on which a problem statement(s) can be developed for further research. Multicultural social integration is about recognising diversity and indifferences. People from different cultural backgrounds may value the public space landscape quite differently to natives. Social integration allows cultural richness to open hearts and minds to different ways of seeing and experiencing public parks and landscapes. It can tell us something about the ways in which people adapt their traditions to different circumstances in a new country. It is the hope of this research that a series of studies on “Multiculturalism and Social Integration and Landscape in Asian Cities” will be done.