Integrating Superdiversity in Urban Governance: The Case of Inner-city Lisbon

This chapter analyses how local urban governance has come to incorporate migration-driven superdiversity in policies, mainly in the realm of mixed cultural and economic development policies. It looks at the case of the Mouraria neighbourhood in Lisbon, arguing that it is a site where a number of strategies have been identified to work towards new forms of accommodating old and new diversities to produce a specific cosmopolitan sense based on a 'diversity advantage' approach. Basically, the concept of 'diversity advantage' encapsulates the idea that diversity should be seen as a resource to be harnessed. It is intrinsically linked to cities' innovative policies and to economic comparative advantage whenever diversity is utilised as an asset. The chapter considers how such linkages have come about in Lisbon, highlighting three urban strategies: de-ethnicisation of superdiversity and urban growth policies; aestheticisation of diversity and the rationale of the encounter; and place marketing and city branding.