Chapter 1 What would a 'DiverCity' be like? Speculation on Difference-sensitive Planning and Living Practices

Abstract

The contemporary city is a field with a myriad of problems that require deep reflection and the questioning of habitual ways of thinking and acting. This chapter examines some of these, while seeking a path – or perhaps a way out – in order to deal with the difficulties linked to the most pressing emergent phenomena: the multiplication of new citizens, the complicated mosaic of differences, the spread of voluntary communities and the requests for recognition in a socially diverse and multiple society.

The reflections brought together in this chapter leave behind mundane literary routines, imprisoned in the clichés of the discourse on post-modernity, to single out a ‘field of practices’ that is enigmatic but at the same time constitutes and generates a new idea of urbanity. DiverCity (Perrone, 2010) is the literary and evocative figuration that recounts this set of practices. The figuration uses a ‘play on words’ between diversity and city, in which the two concepts are understood as entities with a one-to-one correspondence, an ontological interconnection. DiverCity is the outcome of a process to produce and exchange multiple, plural, interactive (built up during the action), expert and experiential knowledge.

Citation

Perrone, C. (2011), "Chapter 1 What would a 'DiverCity' be like? Speculation on Difference-sensitive Planning and Living Practices", Perrone, C., Manella, G. and Tripodi, L. (Ed.) Everyday Life in the Segmented City (Research in Urban Sociology, Vol. 11), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1047-0042(2011)0000011004