Cosmopolitan Urbanism

Jon Binnie, Julian Holloway, Steve Millington, Craig Young

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780415344913
• eBook ISBN: 9781134284375
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

In order to attract investment and tourism, cities are increasingly competing to re-brand themselves as cosmopolitan, and in recent years, cosmopolitanism has become the focus of considerable critical attention in academia. Here, renowned editors and contributors have come together to produce one of the first books to tackle cosmopolitanism from a geographical perspective.

Central to the cosmopolitan process is how traditionally marginalized groups have become re-valued and reconstructed as a resource in the eyes of planners and politicians. This fascinating book examines the politics of these transformations by understanding the everyday practices of cosmopolitanism. Which forms of cultural difference are valued and which are excluded from this re-visioning of the contemporary city? Organized in three distinct parts, the book covers:

• production and consumption, and cosmopolitanism
• the spatialities of cosmopolitanism
• the deployment, mobilization and articulation of cosmopolitan discourses in policy-making and urban design.

The volume is groundbreaking in examining the complex politics of cosmopolitanism in empirical case studies from Montreal to Singapore, London to Texas, Auckland to Amsterdam. With a strong editorial steer, including general and section introductions and a conclusion to guide the student reader, Cosmopolitan Urbanism employs a range of theoretical and empirical approaches to provide a grounded treatment essential for students of human geography, urban studies and sociology.

1: Introduction: grounding cosmopolitan urbanism: Approaches, practices and policies

Jon Binnie, Julian Holloway, Steve Millington and Craig Young

Introduction

On Friday 21 January 2005, the British newspaper The Guardian ran a series of articles exploring and commenting upon London as the ‘world in one city’ where ‘every race, colour, nation and religion’ can be found and experienced. The lead journalist behind these articles, Leo Benedictus (2005: 2), had apparently ‘spent months travelling across the capital, locating and visiting the immigrant communities that give the city its vibrancy’, commenting upon his results that ‘London in 2005 is uncharted territory. Never have so many different kinds of people tried living together in the same place before . . . New York and Toronto would contest the cosmopolitan crown, but London's case is strong.’

To supplement the articles the newspaper provided its readers with maps of London depicting particular clusters of ethnicity and religion in the capital. Ethnic, religious and cultural diversity, it seems, are at the heart of what makes a twenty-first-century city ‘vibrant’. Moreover, it is this difference that apparently makes a city cosmopolitan. The tone of The Guardian was certainly celebratory in its vaunting of London's supposed status as the capital of cosmopolitanism. Just over a fortnight later, another British newspaper, The Independent, published a very different article concerned with ethnic difference in London. The article, by Jason Bennetto the paper's crime correspondent and entitled ‘London's cosmopolitan criminals targeted’, reported an interview with Sir John Stevens, the now former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, about his concerns with the growth of criminal gangs within immigrant communities in the capital. Like The Guardian article, The Independent produced a map of neighbourhoods associated with enclaves of immigrant communities, but instead of praising the opportunities to encounter difference through the consumption of food and different communities, the article highlighted which nationalities and ethnic groups were prevalent in each neighbourhood of the city in terms of the forms of criminality most associated with them – for example, Albanians involved in vice in Soho, Jamaican ‘Yardies’ involved in the drugs trade in Brixton and Hackney. In the interview, Sir John Stevens argues:

We talk about these 16 new communities; Kosovans, Kurds, Turks and others. I think it is an area we really need to keep an eye on. [Criminals within] these communities need to understand our system of law. Some come from countries where there is not much respect for the police, for obvious good reason. They need to understand that we police this country by consent. We are a tolerant country, but we will not allow any form of criminality, especially organised crime to take place. I think these people sometimes come from countries that think we are a soft touch – we prove otherwise.

The two articles give sharply differing accounts of attitudes towards encounters with ethnic and national difference in the cosmopolitan city. The Guardian article celebrates the possibilities and opportunities of living with difference, while the discussion of the violence associated with criminal gangs located within immigrant communities brings into sharp focus the fears associated with encounters with difference in the city.

In a further analysis of difference in British cities, drawing upon the methodology developed by Richard Florida (2002) in The Rise of the Creative Class, the ‘think-tank’ Demos calculated ‘The Boho Britain Creativity Index’ (Demos 2003). This index aimed to measure the ‘creative potential’ of 40 of the UK's largest cities, using three key indicators: the number of patent applications per head; the number of residents who are not categorised as ‘white British’; and the number of services provided to the gay and lesbian community in the city. Ethnic and sexualised difference is thus held to be central to the sustainability, creativity and entrepreneurialism of cities. As Demos (2003) states, ‘Diversity is vital because it is through combining and colliding new and old that innovation and adaptation occur. The more open a city is to new people, new ideas and new ways of living, the greater its creative metabolism will be.’ Based on this justification and criterion it is Manchester, followed by Leicester and London, that heads the list for the ‘new bohemians’ in the UK (Demos 2003).

What is apparent from these British examples is how notions of the cosmopolitan or diverse city are deployed and mobilised in a variety of different contexts. Moreover, these examples reveal that the ‘cosmopolitan city’ as phrase and idea has not only entered, but arguably has become sedimented in, the discourses of the public sphere. The cosmopolitan city is therefore being written about and discussed far beyond the walls of academia. Indeed, the idea that certain cities, or at least areas of cities, are somehow more or less cosmopolitan is something increasingly encountered in the everyday vernacular of contemporary Western societies. This common usage in itself is something that is worthy of attention. Yet the critical issues surrounding the generation and realisation of the cosmopolitan city warrant further scrutiny. For example, why is diversity seen as key to the success of the contemporary city? How and why are policymakers and key players in the urban realm drawing upon the cultural diversity of cities to gain the ‘crown’ of ‘the most cosmopolitan city’?

Furthermore, how is the diversity at the heart of the cosmopolitan city encountered and practised? What are the consequences for those groups woven into this ‘vibrant’ cosmopolitan fabric? What are the consequences for those groups (or cities) deemed non-cosmopolitan? It is our contention in drawing the contributors and case studies together in this collection that only by exploring and grounding questions such as these in contemporary urban contexts can we begin to understand what it is to live in and create the cosmopolitan city. This introduction to Cosmopolitan Urbanism provides the reader with an overview of contemporary debates on cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan urbanism through a discussion of competing definitions of these concepts. We begin by setting out the main characteristics of debates on cosmopolitan identities and subjectivities within social, cultural and political theory. We follow this with a discussion that addresses some of the critical issues raised by articles and surveys like those above by tracing the relationship between cosmopolitanism and the city. Here we focus on key debates concerning gentrification, urban formations of the ‘new middle class’ and new work and consumption spaces. Finally we outline the structure of the book, and discuss how the individual chapters advance debates on cosmopolitan urbanism.

Approaching cosmopolitanism

Since Immanuel Kant's early conceptualisation of cosmopolitanism (see Reiss 1991; Fine 2003a), the term has been variously deployed and variously contested in different literatures. As Szerszynski and Urry (2002: 469) argue, ‘there is no one form of cosmopolitanism; it rather functions as an “empty signifier” . . . having to be filled with specific, and often rather different content, in different situated cultural worlds’. The elusiveness of a simple and coherent definition of the term means that we must tread carefully when deploying it. This is further compounded in that cosmopolitanism is often intimately related to and used interchangeably with other terms that act as diagnoses ‘of the age in which we live’ (Fine 2003b: 452). For example, cosmopolitanism is used frequently in tandem with transnationalism. Yet for some writers, such as Hiebert (2002), a conceptual distinction between transnationalism and cosmopolitanism is necessary, in that transnational communities may not exhibit or embody the qualities specific to the term cosmopolitanism. As such we must acknowledge its multiple usages, but also be careful in discussing it interchangeably with other (albeit related) terms.

This section thus suggests that there are two main ways in which cosmopolitanism has been conceived and understood. As Hiebert (2002: 211–12) suggests:

In everyday language, the term is generally applied to places with a marked cultural diversity (for example, ‘x is a more cosmopolitan city than y’). Among researchers, cosmopolitanism is often equated with political internationalization, whether in the form of institutions such as the United Nations, or global protest movements.

Therefore cosmopolitanism can firstly be conceptualised through its usage in everyday life, especially as a focus on cultural diversity and difference. In particular, cosmopolitanism is often deployed in terms of a specific attitude towards difference and thus the possession of a set of skills that allow individuals to negotiate and understand cultural diversity. As such, this understanding leads to disagreement over the subjectivity or identity of the cosmopolite. Who is s/he? What are the nature and consequences of these skills, both for those that embody them and those who are marked as different? Can we simply locate the subjectivity of the cosmopolite within the body of an elite, educated Western traveller, or is the cosmopolitan more correctly associated with transnational migrants, refugees or asylum seekers?

The second understanding of cosmopolitanism, which Hiebert associates with ‘researchers’, concerns a political geography and philosophy of global citizenship. In this understanding, a normative project which favours ‘universalistic standards of moral judgement, international law and political action’ is underpinned by a rejection of citizenship and loyalties based upon the nation and the nation-state (Fine 2003b: 452). This idea of a reframing of notions of citizenship as part of a ‘cosmopolitan project’ is addressed below.

Cosmopolitan citizenship

Cosmopolitanism is often intimately related to the various processes that exemplify globalisation. Thus as a current condition of society, culture and politics, cosmopolitanism is seen to result from and contribute to the intensification of time-space compression or distanciation. In other words, as we live our lives in increasingly global contexts we have become more aware of the world as both a single place and one comprised of multiple differences. Furthermore, a variety of processes and risks, such as environmental and human rights issues, HIV and AIDS, have transformed the spatial scale of political agency and citizenship. It follows, therefore, that according to advocates of cosmopolitanism, issues of justice, citizenship and politics should now be conceptualised at the global scale. This has consequences for the nation and the nation-state. As Fine (2003b: 453) argues, ‘cosmopolitan political philosophy affirms the possibility and desirability of overriding national sovereignty in the name of cosmopolitan justice’. This universalistic vision of justice and political community is characterised by its global frame of reference, and by a reconfiguration of democracy towards a cosmopolitan vision that replaces political organisation and loyalties based on the ‘narrow particularisms’ of the nation. ‘Thinking and feeling beyond the nation’, as Cheah and Robbins (1998) have it, is something to be advocated and sought out.

In particular, this vision of cosmopolitanism as a philosophy of world citizenship has been articulated through the notion of cosmopolitan law. Thus, whereas international law recognises the integrity of nation-states and their role in enforcing human rights, cosmopolitan law emphasises individuals and groups as legal personalities. Here cosmopolitanism ‘requires the implementation of legal mechanisms that act in the interests of global citizens rather than states’ and as such ‘under cosmopolitan law the bearers of human rights are individuals and not states or nations’ (Stevenson 2002: 2.3, 2.6). Indeed, global socio-economic relations that are arguably undermining the impact of national policies and forms of governance have made developing forms of knowledge, such as cosmopolitan law, increasingly relevant and apposite to the current epoch. For example, Ulrich Beck (2004: 153) goes so far as to say: ‘[t]he social premises of the national state – a uniform space, nation and state – are no longer present, even though new organizational forms of cosmopolitics are not yet clearly discernible’. However, this view is qualified by Fine (2003b: 452) when he states that the project of cosmopolitics ‘aims to reconstruct political life on the basis of an enlightened vision of peaceful relations between nation states, human rights shared by all world citizens, and a global legal order buttressed by a global civic society’.

This perception of a global citizenry acting across and subsequently undermining the sovereignty of the nation and the relevance of national borders is a debatable one. However, it might be that nascent forms of cosmopolitical solidarity are indeed developing. In their essay on everyday practices of global citizenship in the north-west of England, Szerszynski and Urry (2002) identify the development of what they term a ‘cosmopolitan civil society’ (2002: 477) based on a sense of solidarity with, and responsibility for, ‘Others’ beyond the boundaries of their own nation. Interestingly, this sense of cosmopolitan civic duty was differently experienced and conceived across the life course, with significant differences in how global rights and responsibilities and senses of being ‘at home in the world’ were expressed. Thus young people tended to articulate cosmopolitanism through practices of tourism and travel, whereas adults expressed it in terms of responsibilities towards those across the globe, with retired people articulating a new sense of freedom and openness to travel and to experiencing other places and cultures.

A number of criticisms can be levelled against this reading of global civic society in which cosmopolitanism replaces the political, cultural and economic importance of the nation and the nation-state. First, critics argue that the nation-state and sentiments towards the nation are still significant forces in the global economy, polity and society, such that the changes heralded by the emergence of cosmopolitics become ‘short-term, transitory or downright illusory’ (Fine 2003b: 463). For instance, it is evident from Brenda Yeoh's (2004) study of Singapore that cosmopolitanism is being articulated as a project of nation-building or recreating a national identity for the new millennium based on an economy that is receptive to professional foreign migrant workers who can boost the Singapore economy (see also Tan and Yeoh, this volume). Second, it has been suggested that this articulation of cosmopolitanism may in fact dovetail neatly with the neo-conservative political project in the United States (see, for instance, Kiely 2004). Indeed, it might be that cosmopolitanism is merely another aspect of a wider political, economic and social project of certain globally dominant nation-states whose ‘particularistic cultural assumptions, national prejudices and power positions remain intact behind its universalistic discourse and institutions’ (Fine 2003b: 464). Third, those groups who could be seen as eschewing loyalties and attachments centred on the nation-state might actually belong to particular transnational communities, where initial impressions of cosmopolitanism are undermined with further investigation. It is to these groups and the dispositions that they are supposed to articulate that we now turn.

Cosmopolitan attitude and practice

Another of the common understandings of the term cosmopolitanism is founded on an openness to, desire for, and appreciation of, social and cultural difference. This definition arises primarily from the work of Ulf Hannerz (1996: 103) and his frequently cited characterisation of cosmopolitanism as ‘an orientation, a willingness to engage with the Other . . . [entailing] an intellectual and aesthetic stance toward divergent cultural experiences, a search for contrasts rather than uniformity’. The cosmopolite is therefore open to and actively seeks out the different, in a restless search for new cultural experiences. Cosmopolites reject the confines of bounded communities and their own cultural backgrounds. Instead they are seen to embrace a global outlook. As David Ley (2004: 159) notes, ‘Cosmopolitans think globally, aim to exceed their own local specificities, welcome unfamiliar cultural encounters and express the wish to move toward a true humanity of equality and respect, free of racial, national and other prejudices.’

Once again national, and indeed local, particularities are disposed of and new forms of identification based on globality and diversity are sought. Cosmopolitanism is thus an attitude, but also a set of dispositions and forms of practice with and towards diversity. Drawing upon Szerszynski and Urry (2002), we can further explore and characterise this attitude and practice. Cosmopolitan practice involves a set of skills which are applied in the encounter with difference. In particular these skills involve the ability to map one's own socio-cultural position vis-à-vis the diversity encountered, and thus require a degree of reflexive ability whereby the cosmopolite can map and locate such societies and cultures historically and anthropologically. Furthermore, this skilled curiosity towards other societies and cultures often involves a degree of risk by virtue of experiencing diversity and otherness. Thus the skill of the cosmopolite is bound up with moments of uncertainty. Yet this practice remains one where risks are overcome by the ability and willingness of the cosmopolite to make sense of and move through different societies, gathering not only knowledge of the particular culture in question but also enhancing a disposition and attitude that reduces the shock of the new or the different in other circumstances. The cosmopolite therefore becomes skilled in navigating and negotiating difference.

While these characteristics may initially appear uncontroversial, they have been subjected to harsh criticism. In particular, it has been argued that the figure of the cosmopolite must be explored within the context of other identity formations and relations of power. For example, other authors have discussed the gendered nature of cosmopolitanism. Mica Nava (2002) argues that, for British women in the early part of the twentieth century, the desire for the exotic reflected in department stores such as Selfridges may have betrayed a desire to escape and transgress gender and national norms. As she suggests (2002: 85–6), for these women ‘cultural difference and the foreign constituted a source of interest, pleasure and counter-identification that existed in tension with more conservative outlooks’ and thus they ‘appropriate[d] the narratives of difference for themselves in contrary and even polemical ways’.

Another crucial set of identities and power relations which must be taken into accoun...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Cosmopolitan Urbanism
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1: Introduction: grounding cosmopolitan urbanism: Approaches, practices and policies
• Part I: Envisaging cosmopolitan urbanism
• Part II: Consuming the cosmopolitan city: materialities and practices
• Part III: Producing the cosmopolitan city: cultural policy and intervention