Creating Diversity Capital

How do urban communities accommodate this century's massive transnational migrations? This volume seeks clues about how a city's 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. "The 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," writes Ruble. "How does that presence change perceptions and institutions?" 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 2001-2