ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the arguments for and against neighborhood-level or place diversity. While this book is based on the view that neighborhood-level social diversity is essential, an understanding of the counter-arguments is necessary. The chapter also provides the arguments used to support place diversity as a normative goal, organized under two main headings: place vitality and social equity. A sub-category of "place vitality" is economic health. Most often, the public benefit is strictly a matter of stimulating downtown economic growth, not procuring social equity and sustainability through human diversity. Place vitality may also be linked to ecology. Ecology originated as a field of study focused on holistic notions about integrated, balanced, inter-dependent communities of biological organisms. The meaning of an ecologically informed urban planning meant, essentially, a regionalism in which diversity thrived in the form of close-knit communities well-integrated within a larger ecological context.
