Demographic change and a growing sensitivity to the diversity of urban communities have increasingly led planners to recognize the necessity of planning for diversity. Edited by Michael A. Burayidi, Cities and the Politics of Difference offers a guide for making diversity a cornerstone of planning practice. The essays in this collection cover the practical and theoretical issues that surround this transformation, discussing ways of planning for inclusive and multicultural cities, enhancing the cultural competence of planners, and expanding the boundaries of planning for multiculturalism to include dimensions of diversity other than ethnicity and religion – including sexual and gender minorities and Indigenous communities. The advice of the contributors on how planners should integrate considerations of diversity in all its forms and guises into practice and theory will be valuable to scholars and practitioners at all levels of government.

In this book, Michael Keith argues that both racial divisions and intercultural dialogue can only be understood in the context of the urban cities that gave them birth, and considers how race is played out in the worlds most eminent cities.

This book discusses the tension, or even the contradiction, between ethno-cultural segregation and ethno-cultural mixing in the field of the arts. It focuses on the local artistic sphere in the multicultural EU cities of Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, Cologne, Malmö and Vienna. The chapters show a variety of local experiences by exploring in each city discourses, policies and practices in the local artistic field and by addressing one or more of the following questions: How do cities construct diversity discourses and policies? How do migrants and subsequent generations mobilise in the local artistic scene? What type of collective identities and ethnicities are publicly expressed and constructed in the arts? Are immigrant and ethnic artists and productions supported by official cultural institutions? Are local cultural policies becoming multicultural? How do migrant and ethnic artist mobilise in order to change cultural policies? The contributors combine top-down and bottom-up perspectives from a variety of large, mid-size and small European cities to make sense of the links between migrants and ethnic groups and artistic change at the local level. They examine how the city as an artistic space is changed by minority artistic expression and also how local cultural institutions change minority artistic expressions. The chapter authors are drawn from broad variety of disciplines, including anthropology, cultural studies, political science, sociology, urban studies and planning, offering the reader a broad variety of perspectives and insights into this area. This book was originally published as a special issue of Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power.

The most important book on planning practice of the late 20th Century. It will set the terms of debate for years to come. Robert Beauregard The best contemporary text for teaching planning history and theory. It pushes theory and practice beyond its stubbornly modernist paradigms and into the new spaces opened by post-modern, post-colonial and feminist critiques. Edward Soja Sandercock draws on recent theoretical and political debates on gender, rate and sexuality as well as on grassroot struggles in the radically multiple cities of the late 20th Century to argue that planners have to find a way of building the new multicultural city, the Cosmopolis. Neil Smith A brilliant tour de force, an original critique no thinking planner should be without. Passionate yet coherently reasoned and lucidly written, the book advances a Utopian vision, deeply grounded in actual cases drawn from a wide variety of countries, to demonstrate how multicultural urban communities can achieve justice in a democratic manner. Janet Abu-Lughod From polis to metropolis, men and women have continued to struggle to perfect our cities. Urban history presents a picture of grand ideals and devastating failures. Towards Cosmopolis explores why we have failed, and how we could succeed, in building an urban Utopia - with a difference. Globalization, civil society, feminism and post-colonialism are the forces, ever shifting and changing, which are shaping our cities. We need a new vision to face such change. Sandercock pulls down the pillars of modernist city planning and raises in their place a new post-modern planning, a planning sensitive to community, environment and cultural diversity. Towards Cosmopolis is illustrated with case material from around the world - which present 'a thousand tiny empowerments' of current planning practice - and with a superb range of specially commissioned images. This bold critique cuts to the heart of current debates about the future of our cities. It deserves a place on every citizen's shelf.

Cultural diversity---the multitude of different lifestyles that are not necessarily based on ethnic culture---is a catchphrase increasingly used in place of multiculturalism and in conjunction with globalization. Even though it is often used as a slogan it does capture a widespread phenomenon that cities must contend with in dealing with their increasingly diverse populations. The contributors examine how Russian cities are responding and through case studies from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and Sochi explore the ways in which different cultures are inscribed into urban spaces, when and where they are present in public space, and where and how they carve out their private spaces. Through its unique exploration of the Russian example, this volume addresses the implications of the fragmented urban landscape on cultural practices and discourses, ethnicity, lifestyles and subcultures, and economic practices, and in doing so provides important insights applicable to a global context. --Book Jacket.

How can we learn from a multicultural society if we don’t know how to recognise it? The contemporary city is more than ever a space for the intense convergence of diverse individuals who shift in and out of its urban terrains. The city street is perhaps the most prosaic of the city’s public parts, allowing us a view of the very ordinary practices of life and livelihoods. By attending to the expressions of conviviality and contestation, ‘City, Street and Citizen’ offers an alternative notion of ‘multiculturalism’ away from the ideological frame of nation, and away from the moral imperative of community. This book offers to the reader an account of the lived realities of allegiance, participation and belonging from the base of a multi-ethnic street in south London. ‘City, Street and Citizen’ focuses on the question of whether local life is significant for how individuals develop skills to live with urban change and cultural and ethnic diversity. To animate this question, Hall has turned to a city street and its dimensions of regularity and propinquity to explore interactions in the small shop spaces along the Walworth Road. The city street constitutes exchange, and as such it provides us with a useful space to consider the broader social and political significance of contact in the day-to-day life of multicultural cities. Grounded in an ethnographic approach, this book will be of interest to academics and students in the fields of sociology, global urbanisation, migration and ethnicity as well as being relevant to politicians, policy makers, urban designers and architects involved in cultural diversity, public space and street based economies.

By adopting an approach that is sensitive to issues of difference as well as to the role of the state, Cities of Difference considers the fragmentation of city life and the complex relationship between identity, power and place.