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

Urban Diversity:  Space, Culture, and Inclusive Pluralism in Cities Worldwide, edited by Caroline Wanjiku Kihato, Mejgan Massoumi, Blair A. Ruble, Pep Subirós, and Allison M. Garland

Publisher

Woodrow Wilson Center Press with Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010

ISBN

978-0-8018-9801-3
Urban Diversity:  Space, Culture, and Inclusive Pluralism in Cities Worldwide, edited by Caroline Wanjiku Kihato, Mejgan Massoumi, Blair A. Ruble, Pep Subirós, and Allison M. Garland

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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.