Cosmopolitanism in cities and beyond

Abstract

Given their distinctively multicultural character, it is widely understood today that cities, as nodes in transnational networks, are exemplary crucibles where cosmopolitanism and its accompanying creative energies are forged. Urban managers around the globe have, not surprisingly, also been eager to project their respective cities as such - as magnetic poles and economic powerhouses where diverse streams of activities, ideas and people converge, constituting 'mongrel cities' of the twenty-first century (Sandercock 2003). In alluding to the ascendancy of difference and hybridity as key signatures of today's urban landscape, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for instance, recently hailed New York as 'the freest city in the world', 'built [and] sustained by immigrants ... from more than a hundred countries, speaking more than two hundred languages, and professing every faith' (Bloomberg 2010). Similarly in Asia, while Hong Kong proclaimed itself to be the region's world city' in its millennial branding effort in 2001, Singapore promises to become an 'oasis of harmony with a rich diversity of people, culture [sic] and ideas' (Goh 2009). These pronouncements, also prominent in diversity campaigns in European and Canadian cities, as well as the clamour to become the next host - from Sydney to Rio - of 'globe-fitting' mega-events, are clearly signal that cities around the world are fast catching onto a new language of urban success. To wit, these novel forms of representation strive not just to celebrate cities' capacity to welcome a myriad of people of disparate origins, but also endeavour to conjure cosmopolitanism as a major selling point and exchangeable currency for aspiring cities as proof of global status (Benton-Short et al. 2005).