Revisiting Jane Jacobs: Quantifying urban diversity

This study attempts to formally quantify Jane Jacob’s notion of urban diversity and examine whether greater diversity actually contributes economic benefits to a neighborhood. Focusing on the number and types of stores at the street level, we use the Shannon–Weaver index to quantify commercial diversity. We then compare the obtained degrees of diversity with store sales volumes obtained through credit card transaction data aggregated in the neighborhood divided into a 200-m grid. The results of the analysis, performed on 50 Spanish cities, show that the greater the diversity in the grid, the higher the sales volumes of the stores, and this tendency is more evident in large than in small–medium cities. In addition, we found that the coexistence of different store types provides a positive environment for the emergence of hub stores. We specifically define a hub store in this paper as the store with the largest revenue within a grid, provided that the distribution of the sales revenue in a grid is statistically similar to the power law. We speculate that hub stores trigger exploration between different store types, and consequently, the sales volumes of highly diverse neighborhoods increase compared with those of less diverse neighborhoods. These results highlight the importance of urban diversity for economic prosperity, which can lead to an increased quality of life for city neighborhoods.

Governing urban diversity through myths of national sameness – a comparative analysis of Denmark and Sweden

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore problematisations of urban diversity in urban and integration policies in Denmark and Sweden; the paper aims to show how such policies express social imaginaries about the self and the other underlying assumptions of sameness that legitimise diverging ways of managing urban diversity and (re)organising the city.Design/methodology/approachInspired by anthropology of policy and post-structural approaches to policy analysis, the authors approach urban and integration policies as cultural texts that are central to the organisation of cities and societies. With a comparative approach, the authors explore how visions of diversity take shape and develop over time in Swedish and Danish policies on urban development and integration.FindingsSwedish policy constructs productiveness as crucial to the imagined national sameness, whereas Danish policy constructs cultural sameness as fundamental to the national self-image. By constructing the figure of “the unproductive”/“the non-Western” as the other, diverging from an imagined sameness, policies for organising the city through removing and “improving” urban diverse others are legitimised.Originality/valueThe authors add to previous research by focussing on the construction of the self as crucial in processes of othering and by highlighting how both nationalistic and colour-blind policy discourses construct myths of national sameness, which legitimise the governing of urban diversity. The authors highlight and de-naturalise assumptions and categorisations by showing how problem representations differ over time and between two neighbouring countries.

Influence of Caring and Empathy on Students' Multiculturalism Mediated by Christianity: Role of University Core Values

Urban diversity is a reality for young people living in megacities such as Jakarta. Diversity in urban areas has its benefits; for example, it is a driver of creativity and innovation, but this urban diversity is vulnerable to intergroup friction and conflict. Therefore, urban youth needs to have a sense of multiculturalism, that is, an open attitude and respect for differences. Strong connections between Multiculturalism and Empathy as well as between Multiculturalism and spirituality or religiosity have been recognized. Universities that implement religious-oriented values and openness toward diversity are more likely to promote student multiculturalism. Based on literature, our study examines the influence of the organizational core values of Christianity and Caring as well as an additional social skill variable of Empathy on Multiculturalism among students in a Catholic university in Jakarta. We hypothesize that Multiculturalism is predicted by Caring and Empathy mediated by Christianity. This research was conducted with 155 bachelor students at University X. Research instruments comprised Organizational Core Value questionnaires, the Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright’s Empathy Quotient, and the Universal-Diverse Orientation Scale. Data were analyzed using the path analysis technique. The results show that Multiculturalism is predicted by Caring and Empathy mediated by Christianity. Christianity influences Multiculturalism. Each of Caring and Empathy influences Multiculturalism with the mediation of Christianity. These results suggest that a university might cultivate Multiculturalism by thoughtfully channeling religiously oriented values and a sense of Caring and Empathy in building university culture.

Mapping diversity: From ecology and human geography to urbanism and culture

A large body of research across science and humanities has come to deal with diversity, which, as a scientific concept, proved immensely relevant in understanding anything from nature and ecosystems to cities and culture. Here, we develop a first method to quantify and map urban diversity. Our article begins with a concrete example through which we demonstrate how to apply a basic version of our method to create a diversity map for a given urban area. This map is easy to interpret and can be used to accurately locate the most diverse centers of urban activity. We then go on to show how our basic method can be expanded to quantify many different types of urban diversity, and how it can be scaled out towards high- resolution mapping of diversity on local, regional, and global scales. Finally, we make a bridge to other scientific disciplines by proposing six key components that may serve as a foundation for a general framework for diversity analysis and mapping. Finally, we suggest that these maps could be very important, in particular in understanding cycles of diversification and growth.

Everyday Cosmopolitanism in African Cities: Places of Leisure and Consumption in Antananarivo and Maputo

African cities are sometimes considered “off the map” as underdeveloped peripheries alienated from cultural globalisation. The intrinsic ethnic and cultural diversity of African cities is often overshadowed by a distant perception of their overall “blackness” and a supposed cultural uniformity. These cities have always been places of intense circulation and mass settlement both from within the continent and from outside, may it be from Asia, Europe and the Middle East in colonial contexts notably but also more recently Latin America. However, African urban diversity and the recent changes it underwent has received little academic attention.This chapter describes cosmopolitan practices and representations in Antananarivo (Madagascar) and Maputo (Mozambique), mainly but not only focusing on Chinese diasporas and communities sharing Chinese origins through observation and interviews. Cosmopolitan interactions in old or newly created so-called “ethnic” places such as restaurants, casinos and other leisure settings are under study to discuss processes of neighbouring cosmopolitanism at the very local place. Residents of African cities display features of cosmopolitan urbanites with intense variation across contexts and communities.