Religious super-diversity and spatial strategies in two European cities

Abstract

The background to this article is the debate on cities as post-secular and super-diverse. The authors question that the concept of post-secular cities usefully sums up the complex processes currently characterizing religion in contemporary European cities. They propose that different historical memories are layered upon one another and they demonstrate how religious diversity and cities mutually shape one another. Based on empirical illustrations from research in Potsdam and Turin, the authors argue that cities affect religion by casting religious communities and their forms of sociality within particular spatial regimes and contributing to the territorialization of religious categories. Moreover, they state that religious groups shape cities by leaving durable architectural imprints on them. In particular, the article develops the notion of formations of religious super-diversity, which involves forms of religious belonging and identity that historically emerged through religious dissent and innovation, and shows that urban space is the iconic arena in which religious super-diversity becomes visible through the ways in which religious spatial strategies interact with cities’ spatial regimes. The authors identify three types of spatial strategies – place keeping, making and seeking – each of which expresses and responds to communities’ relationship to urban space in different ways. The typology is meant to serve as a tool to read complex processes taking into consideration both historical paths and contemporary religious formations.