It has produced cultural hybridity: a city such as London includes people
from India, Pakistan, Africa and many other locations. Some of these
people, like Karim Amir, the central character in Hanif Kureishi’s The
Buddha of Suburbia (1990), were born in England, but are from families
where at least one parent is Asian or African. Consequently, they do not feel
they belong entirely to one culture or the other. The diasporic city contains
within it ethnic micro-cities: the most obvious of these is the Chinatown we
see in most urban centres. An important aspect of the diasporic city can be
the experience of immigration into a new and strange environment with
radically different cultural values, religion and language. Problems can also
result from growing up in a family which abides by fundamentally different
values from others in the community. Most serious is the experience of
racial discrimination, and the difficulties of socially and legally rebutting it.
The diasporic city is as much about displacement as about place.
The consumerist city
Cities are also sites of intensive consumerism. Consumerism is, in many
ways, the new religion. Shopping malls are more popular places to frequent
than parks or gardens. Consumerism can be viewed negatively as rampant
materialism and commodification: an elitist sport only available to those
who are affluent. The violence, greed, selfishness and madness which can
ensue when consumerism in the city reaches extremes is graphically evoked
in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991) and Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis
(2003). But consumerism can also be viewed more positively as a creative
endeavour, an opportunity to make choices and develop tastes.
The underprivileged city
Whenever we walk through the streets of the city we are likely to see home-
less people. The city is also the site for drug trafficking and prostitution:
on the streets we are as aware of the disadvantaged as we are of the
affluent. In many cities around the world, unemployment problems and
low incomes have impacted on the urban environment. Ethnic minorities
and indigenous people are often among the low paid and underprivileged.
Within any city there is an underbelly: a side of life that many people
would like to ignore. There are many sites in the city, such as prisons,
orphanages or hostels, which are signs of the underprivileged.
The gendered and sexualised city
The city is a site of conflicting demands for some women between work
and motherhood. Whereas more and more women are working in the city,
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