ABSTRACT
This chapter will, to a great extent, involve looking backward into the future. I focus here on the problems and opportunity in social diversity. There are, without a doubt, new ways to think about diversity in the contemporary terms of a network society. But diversity, whether welcome or unwelcome, is an ageold theme for cities. In the sense that urban settlements first arose and still develop fastest at the junctures and crossroads, cities were born of differences – both the complementarities and the tensions that difference adds to the human experience. My principal aim here is to consider what it will mean to accommodate increased diversity in cities in an age of networks. Each of those parts – diversity, cities, networks – is crucial to my scope. I will preview each before outlining two main arguments. On a final prefatory note, I write from the vantage point of a changing United States but address the wider globe.
