Multiculturalism and Diversity in Urban Revitalization

This article examines the uses of “diversity” in the revitalization of two public housing projects in Toronto, Canada: Regent Park and Lawrence Heights. Both revitalization plans emphasize a diversity of use, diversity of income, and diversity of culture. I argue the diversity of diversity serves as a legitimizing tool for the revitalization projects and that the use of the term is productively ambiguous and draws from the cachet of Canadian multiculturalism, without explicitly naming race and racial inequality. My analysis sheds light on tensions between the types of diversity, challenging the potential for the framework to address structural inequality via revitalization. While both diversity and mix (mixed income or diversity of incomes, for example) are generally taken-for-granted terms in planning discourse, promoting more equitable planning practices requires analyzing them more closely in context.