ABSTRACT
Cultural diversity in metropolitan cities has changed the world of planning. Planners are confronting an increasing array of issues with explicit cultural dimensions such as public provision of multilingual services, permitting of nonEnglish storefront signage, siting of religious temples, and the preservation of sacred sites, to name just a few (Edelstein and Kleese 1995; Jennings 1994; Saito 1998). Cultural diversity is also evident in planning processes, as people of diverse cultural backgrounds are a growing presence in institutions of planning. Planners hear from an increasing number of cultural groups who speak in more than one hundred languages in world cities such as Los Angeles and New York City. And planning staffs of municipal governments and policy-making agencies are becoming more diverse, especially racially and ethnically. This diversity presents many challenges to planners. One of the most difficult is to design and facilitate planning processes that can accommodate cultural differences, for this requires planners to extend their thinking into other epistemological worlds – like walking
in another’s shoes. Not only is this difficult (and some would say impossible), it is a skill seldom emphasized in professional training.
