Cultural diversity & Urban Development: An Introduction
A number of forces and counter-trends, changed into concepts, have in recent years affected international policy concerning urban development (Feather, 1989). Globalization appears to be the most wide-ranging and inflexible, with its double-sidedness stressed (Marcuse, 1995). Its components are: (i) an increasing concentration of economic wealth in fewer private hands; (ii) rapid changes in communication technology and, (iii) extended global connections between selected cities. A further aspect of the development is its inevitability and lack of a defined corporate hierarchy, legitimizing, through the competitive market, business and social successes and failures. For major cities, acting as centers of economic power, the subject is the degree to which it is desirable to be integrated within global networks, with their contingent benefits but simultaneous losses of local cultural identity (Garau, 1992).
Of course, it is not only development goals, which have been transformed, but also the means of guiding, and dealing with, sweeping changes in urban processes. Governance has taken central stage, reflecting a shift towards reaction rather than guidance, frequently through joint public-private partnerships. Change management procedures focus on improvement of the skills needed to use the new technologies, while protecting the effects of strict occupational and business disorder. Such progress in deploying new instruments is, though, yet to translate into widespread improvements in urban development. Rather, there is evidence of a new growing urban polarization, based on educational stratification and extending to social and spatial fragmentation (Castells, 1991).
The related concept, of sustainability, has so far reflected a concern for natural rather than social resources, with a general disrespect for the protection of diverse cultural practices. For example, the 'cultural mutations' inherent in the dynamic way in which both urban minorities and dominant city groups use resources and space, have often remained unheeded.......
