Urban Diversity: Space, Culture, and Inclusive Pluralism in Cities Worldwide

As the world’s urban populations grow, cities become spaces where increasingly diverse peoples negotiate such differences as language, citizenship, ethnicity and race, class and wealth, and gender. Using a comparative framework, Urban Diversity examines the multiple meanings of inclusion and exclusion in fast—changing urban contexts. The contributors identify specific areas of contestation, including public spaces and facilities, governmental structures, civil society institutions, cultural organizations, and cyberspace.

The contributors also explore the socioeconomic and cultural mechanisms that can encourage inclusive pluralism in the world’s cities, seeking approaches that view diversity as an asset rather than a threat. Exploring old and new public spaces, practices of marginalized urban dwellers, and actions of the state, the contributors to Urban Diversity assess the formation and reformation of processes of inclusion, whether through deliberate actions intended to rejuvenate democratic political institutions or the spontaneous reactions of city residents.

Caroline Wanjiku Kihato is a senior research fellow at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand. Mejgan Massoumi is the manager and program coordinator for the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and former project associate of the Comparative Urban Studies Program (CUSP) at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Blair A. Ruble is director of CUSP and director of the Kennan Institute.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Exploring the Contours of Inclusion and Exclusion in Twenty-First-Century Cities
Caroline Wanjiku Kihato, Mejgan Massoumi, Blair A. Ruble, Pep Subirós, and Allison M. Garland

Part I. Mutations of Public Space and the Public Domain
1. Collective Culture and Urban Public Space
Ash Amin
2. Kyiv: Reinventing the Agora? Public Space as Political Arena
Victor Stepanenko
3. Ethnic Precincts and Neo-Bohemias: The Future of Retail and Leisure “Contact Zones” in the Inclusive City
John Hannigan
4. Cyberspace as the New Public Domain
Mike Crang
5. Negotiating Gender and Access to Knowledge Technology in the Urban Context
Pumla Dineo Gqola

Part II. Claiming Urban Space: New Modes of Inclusion and Belonging in Cities
6. Civic Governmentality: The Politics of Inclusion in Beirut and Mumbai
Ananya Roy
7. Inclusion in Shifting Sands: Rethinking Mobility and Belonging in African Cities
Loren B. Landau
8. Youth Cultures and the Mediation of Racial Exclusion or Inclusion in Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town
Edgar Pieterse
9. Reconfiguring Citizenship in African Cities: Inclusion and Exclusion in Inner-City Johannesburg
Caroline Wanjiku Kihato
10. Multilingual Cities: Communities of Knowledge
Alícia Fuentes-Calle

Part III. Toward Inclusive Urban Governance?
11. Diversity and Urban Governance
Richard Stren
12. Participatory Budgeting Processes in Brazil—Fifteen Years Later
Edesio Fernandes
13. Crime and Violence: The Threat of Division and Exclusion in Latin American Cities
Joseph S. Tulchin
14. Urban Inclusion and Public Space: Challenges in Transforming Barcelona
Joan Roca i Albert
15. A Voice Is Heard in the City: Inclusive Cities and Citizen Voice
Steven Friedman

“The book is original in its global comparative perspective. It captures the global problem of the ever-increasing size of cities and hence their sustainability.”—Caroline B. Brettell, Southern Methodist University

“This broad collection of ideas and solutions, data, and reflections should stimulate scholars and policy makers to reconsider their work while looking at other changing cities worldwide.”—Choice

“Complex and ambitious…. An ideal book for comparative urban studies class and a must read for any scholar or policy-maker interested in tackling the challenges of the Twenty-First century city.”—Deirdre A. Oakley, International Journal of Comparative Sociology