Abstract

While cultural diversity is increasingly becoming present in the landscape of our cities, planners and policy makers are still in hot debates over how to deal with such diversity. There are contrasting views on whether cultural diversity is essentially a threat or an opportunity to the city. This paper takes a theoretical approach by revisiting the related literature in looking at the role of urban planners in handling diversity and their contribution to accommodating difference. In this regards the main planning approaches are reviewed parallel to five common models of diversity handling policies in order to analyze the evolutionary trend of dealing with diversity through planning policies and practices. This discussion is followed by a closer look at the mostly disputed model of dealing with difference or “Multiculturalism,” its emergence as a paradigm and the main critics against it, focusing on the two aspects of multicultural planning that need to be urgently revisited.