Intercultural Cities

Book excerpt: Intercultural cities introduces a new model of local governance and policy in the age of diversity: the model of intercultural integration. This model has been built on the basis of experience in real-life cities and with their active participation. City-to-city mentoring and learning have played a key role in this process. This volume explains what intercultural integration means in practice: how it affects policies, governance and citizenship, public discourse, media relations, public services and the urban environment. It reviews the processes that facilitate the development of intercultural strategies and presents a wide range of examples, including the intercultural profiles of 11 cities across Europe. Intercultural integration adds another dimension to the management of culturally diverse populations, compared to previous models, in particular multiculturalism. In addition to non-discrimination, equal opportunities and cultural rights, interculturalism focuses on building trust and cohesion by encouraging interaction and mixing between cultural groups in the public realm and encouraging a positive discourse and attitude to diversity within the community.It also focuses on improving the efficiency of public services by making them more culturally sensitive and adapted to the needs of diverse users, and on the need for specific services such as those dealing with intercultural mediation and conflict prevention.