ABSTRACT
Given their distinctively multicultural character, it is widely understood today that cities, as nodes in transnational networks, are exemplary crucibles where cosmopolitanism and its accompanying creative energies are forged (Warf, 2015). In extreme form, it is assumed that “a veritable urban alchemy” is at work that can transform “the diverse and divided population of a city… into one harmonious community of cosmopolitan citizens” (Muller, 2011: 3416). In recent years, cosmopolitanism has been inserted back into both scholarly and popular discussions on urban diversity and emergent civil spaces, particularly in the context of the rising presence of transnational migrants and the increasing proliferation of contact zones that renders the contemporary globalising city as “the very place of our meeting with the other” (Jacobs, 1996: 4, paraphrasing Barthes). Urban managers around the globe have also been eager to project their respective cities as “cosmopolitan” in order to signify their roles as creative hubs, economic powerhouses and magnetic poles where diverse streams of activities, ideas and people converge. In alluding to the ascendancy of difference and hybridity as key signatures of today’s urban landscape, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for instance, hailed New York as “the freest city in the world”, “built [and] sustained by immigrants… from more than a hundred countries, speaking more than two hundred languages, and professing every faith” (Bloomberg, 2010). Similarly in Asia, former Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew (2000) at the millennial turn had urged Singaporeans to embrace the idea of becoming “a cosmopolitan city that attracts and welcomes talent in business, academia, or in the performing arts [in order to] add to Singapore’s vibrancy and secure our place in a global network of cities of excellence”.
