Strangers as Neighbors in the Cosmopolis: New Migrants in London, Diversity, and Place

In another chapter in this book, Rosemary Sales and her colleagues discuss issues of space and place in the cosmopolitan city, focusing on London’s Chinatown. Chinatown and the East End’s Brick Lane constitute perhaps London’s most recognizable sites of “branded difference” in a general trend of “ethnic” neighborhoods being transformed into places of leisure and consumption (Shaw et al. 2004; Rath 2007), a trend that refl ects broader developments associated with contemporary dynamics of urban restructuring, especially in global cities (Sassen 1991). Yet both these areas emerge as “signifi ers” of difference “inscribed in urban landscapes” (Shaw et al. 1983) and have come to represent visible loci of multiculture in Britain’s capital, featuring as emblematic, celebratory examples of its diversity and as spectacles of its cosmopolitan appeal.