Spaces of Difference

The “spaces of difference” concept refers to how space is socially constructed to be different depending on who the individual is in a particular space and how that individual utilizes that space. Ideas about spaces of difference are important to academics, city planners, governments, and nongovernmental agencies in terms of understanding how Western ideologies and social construction processes create and reify inequalities in everyday environments. These processes physically and socially manifest in the urban environment affecting the everyday lived realities and practices of urban populations. These populations are not homogeneous; rather they contain a multiplicity of identities. In this ever-decreasing spatial world, thanks to globalization and the compression of temporal and spatial distances, international agencies and relations, and geopolitical rhetoric, the illusion of homogeneity is crumbling. No longer can socially bound groups, especially those groups who are in dominant positions, hide behind a clear border separating them from the “other” (i.e., everyone not like them). Nevertheless, attempts are made to maintain separate spaces based on, not difference, but sameness, such as in gated communities, social clubs, and gentrified redevelopment practices. Today, it is well acknowledged that identity, even for one individual, is of a multiple nature, making spaces of difference increasingly difficult to maintain. Spaces of difference are becoming more theoretical, constructed, and perpetuated conceptually concomitant with its physical space.

When the notion of difference is attached to the idea of space, an “othering” occurs. Edward Said has brought the idea of the other to social science through his work on the theory of Orientalism. Said's work details how this practice of othering is communicated through an “us and them” or, in reality, an “us versus them” understanding of social order. Spaces of difference are created through discursive practices all working within the same space based upon these notions of difference. This communication allows individuals to categorize and relate to their surrounding spaces from neighborhood to national to global scales. Contemporary theoretical approaches to spaces of difference have a vast range from feminist movements to sociological perspectives to Marxist studies to social identity arguments to queer theory about urban environments. The purpose here is not to argue one of these approaches over the other, but to see how spaces of difference are created by virtue of the existence of numerous discourses that produce an everyday lived experience of difference. Many types and forms of these spaces of difference exist in urban environments, but for this purpose the focus will be on some of the overarching categories of difference, including gender, age, class, ethnicity and religion, sexual identity, and appropriate uses of urban spaces. By creating these categories of differences, everyday inequalities and notions of appropriateness are the realities of urban experience and play key roles in how multiple layers of users and spatial practices create complex spaces of difference in the same physical space.