How do urban communities accommodate this century鈥檚 massive transnational migrations? This volume seeks clues about how a city鈥檚 capacity for urban social sustainability, termed "diversity capital," may expand under such conditions.
The author, Blair A. Ruble, examines three cities, now receiving large numbers of new immigrants, that have long histories of division into just two communities of language and race: Montreal, Washington, and Kyiv. 鈥淭he growing presence of individuals who do not fit into long-standing group boundaries fundamentally alters the social, cultural, and political contours of traditionally bifurcated metropolitan regions,鈥 writes Ruble. 鈥淗ow does that presence change perceptions and institutions?鈥
Creating Diversity Capital approaches this topic in terms of how the new immigrants live, work, and go to school and describes how the politics in each of these cities has changed, or failed to change, in the face of the new demographics. A special feature is the use of important new information on Kyiv from a set of surveys conducted by the Kennan Institute in 2001鈥2.
Blair A. Ruble is director of the Kennan Institute and co-chair of the Comparative Urban Studies Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the author, most recently, of Second Metropolis: Pragmatic Pluralism in Gilded Age Chicago, Silver Age Moscow, and Meiji Osaka.
