The Importance Of Diversity In Cosmopolis II: Mongrel Cities

Literature review

##In the book The intercultural city: Planning for diversity advantage (Wood, Landry, 2012) it is suggested one should focus on diversity advantage for neighborhoods, cities, and nations rather than the diversity deficit. The way you look at the problem determines how you address it. If we see everything as a problem to be solved, the mind sees more trouble than opportunity. The authors argue that if cities, whether through choice or ignorance, find themselves in the “aversion” or “benign indifference” to diversity, they will ultimately lose out – in competitiveness or quality of life – to those that actively seek to position themselves in the zone of active interaction.

##Sandercock has explored what diversity really means for the planning and running of the city of the future, as she names it cosmopolis, in the book Cosmopolis II: Mongrel Cities of the 21st Century (2003). She dissects the principles upon which the established wisdom of urban planning is based; demonstrating that, in general, statutes and by-laws will

This involves nothing less than openness on the part of host societies to being redefined in the process of migrant integration, and to new notions of a common identity emerging through an always contested notion of the common good and shared destiny of all residents.
7) An understanding of and preparedness to work with the emotions that drive these conflicts over integration: emotions of fear, and attachment to history and memory, as well as the status quo, on the part of host societies; and the (possibly ambivalent) desire for belonging, and fear of exclusion on the part of migrants. Not to acknowledge and deal with these emotions is a recipe for failure in the longer-term project of intercultural